Caves And Rivers
by OceanFire9
Summary: Mr. Wink's romance with a Rhine maid in LA Knight's Nuada/OFC fic, "Once Upon A Time." C'mon, it's WINK! You KNOW you're curious! This has been approved by LA Knight & ties into the larger story.
1. All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking

_**Timeframe:**_ Somewhat co-running with Chapter 34 of _Once Upon A Time,_ by LA Knight

_**Location:**_ the Troll Market (initially), and Fafner's Cave (the tavern).

_**Premise:**_ This is an attempt at some playing with the idea LA Knight presented (in Chapter 34) of Wink being an accomplished lover as well as warrior... and a possible explanation of where and how he might have gotten that mostly empty bottle of Elf wine and the Troll beer. ;)

EDIT: Disregard some of what I just wrote there, since after talking it over with LA and both of us going "hey, why not," and giving the idea a thumbs-up with big smiles, as of Chapter 37, the Wink/Lorelei pairing is now in the works for _Once Upon A Time_ canon, w00t!

_**Characters:**_ Wink the troll is not mine, he belongs to the whole Hellboy-movies-and-comics crew. Lorelei the rhinemaiden is _technically_ not mine, either, she belongs to LA Knight... Egad, I think I've just essentially said that LA owns me. O_O In some fashion, anyway.

A/N - All German dialogue is in italics. Trollish dialogue will remain in regular font. You will want to have at least read Chapter 26 of _Once Upon A Time,_ because that's the chapter where Lorelei and Fafner's Cave, the bar that she owns, are introduced.

Please enjoy. :)

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><p><em><span>Synesthesia<span>__: A term for when a stimulus of one sort causes an involuntary, automatic experience of an alternate sensory impression, as in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, such as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color, for example._

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><p><em>"Danke."<em> That was what she said to the spirits dealer, in a voice as smooth and clear as a stream in late summer, with a satisfied smile curving her deep red mouth and shining from her ultra-gold eyes like illumined coins. Right before she started to make her way to leave the brewery behind her for the closest exit from the Troll Market... Right before a sudden _CLANCH!_ noise, and an iron weight locking onto her arm, made that mouth fall open with a silent gasp, and those eyes go wide with surprise.

Lorelei was spun around and yanked sharply back for about the space of almost two-and-a-half yards, falling against a great hulking weight that held her tightly - _just_ as a large, out-of-control cart, which she had not had time to see coming, missed careening _right_ into her. After it had passed, she kept staring after it with the same wide-eyed and open-mouthed expression still fixed to her face... Until she noticed that the towering mass that she had been pulled against carried with it a deep voice that was rumbling softly with laughter (probably at the look on her face).

The minute she heard that voice, all other dazed thoughts flying around in her brain at the whole situation fled from Lorelei's mind, and she looked up with a smile into the face of none other than...

_"Herr Wink,"_ she gasped, still reeling from the shock of what had just happened. "I wasn't _expecting_ to run into you, but it is a pleasure all the same," she said with a weak laugh. Wink grinned and chuckled with her before he helped her to right herself on her feet again. After a moment or two of shared smiles, Lorelei noticed that the troll's mechanical, chain-launchable-and-retractable metal hand was still clenched lightly but strongly around her arm. _"Bitte," _she said, "may I have my arm back?" Wink gave her a look that said _Hmm?_ "I promise you, I'm not broken," she quipped, with a meaningful glance at his hand. That's when Wink noticed it, too, and he gave her an apologetic look as he carefully, one mechanical digit at a time, relinquished his hold on the river-fairy's slender arm. _"Vielen Dank,"_ she responded, lightly rubbing up and down her now-freed arm.

As the enormous troll stood up straight again, he took in and appreciated, briefly, the lovely sight of the shaken up Rhine daughter that he was pleased to count among those whom he called "friend," and noted the tiny, uneven shiver that had invaded her voice with a measure of sympathy for the startled maiden.

"Other than _that,"_ Wink growled, nodding in the direction of the runaway cart, "how fare you of late, Lorelei? Well enough I hope?"

_"Ja,"_ she replied, after taking a few more seconds to finish collecting herself. "More excellent than usual, actually. Business has taken quite a good turn, for whatever reason, as the weather has gotten colder. In fact, that's why I am here, I was just ordering some supplies to re-stock the tavern." Lorelei looked off in the direction that the runaway cart had kept going and gave a slight shudder. "I was about to be on my way back, when you rescued me from that not-altogether-pleasant fate." Her aspect hosted another wry smile, and she returned her golden gaze to the one good eye of the silver troll.

_"Und du, Wink?"_ The tiny shake in her voice had gone its way quickly, for she once again spoke with as rich a clarity as found in a wash of crystalline water, "What brings you here tonight?"

Wink gave a very light, casual shrug of his massive shoulders. "Running a few minor errands of my own on behalf of Prince Nuada and myself. Nothing of great importance," he answered. Then he paused, before he asked, "Will you now be on your way, then?"

Lorelei nodded. "I will, _ja..."_ She trailed off for a few seconds, and then she surprised them both by saying, "Ah, would you... Would you like to come with me to my place for a drink?" Wink at first stared in intrigued surprise, and then a smile overtook him while she rushed on, "If your errands are through with, that is." Her smile was lopsided as she said, "I feel that you deserve something more than just a breathless 'thank you' for your chivalry, and besides," her smile softened, "how long has it been since we've been in each other's company? Three months? Four? Was it early Autumn or late Summer? The relativity of time as we live it tends to blur in and out with time as we measure it, I've too often noticed."

Wink's one good eye glittered as he answered, in his deep, growling voice, "Too long, either way, my dear Lorelei, and while I do still have a few things left to be done-" he made a dismissive gesture with his mechanical hand in such a way that it made Lorelei giggle quietly "-as I have said, 'tis all nothing of great importance. I would be delighted to repair to Fafner's Cave with you."

The Rhine daughter grinned. "It's after-hours. We'll essentially have the place all to ourselves."

"Most excellent," growled Wink in reply, his own smile just as broad.

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><p>True to the river maid's word, Fafner's Cave was, for all intents and purposes, empty as Lorelei and Wink stepped over to the bar - Wink seating himself in front of it, Lorelei discarding the jacket and gloves that she'd been wearing while she was out and standing behind it. <em>"Was möchtest du trinken?"<em> The tall faery woman asked of her guest, leaning forward with her hands on the bar and smiling. "Is there anything in particular that would interest you?"

For a moment, Wink was tempted to reply with something witty along the lines of implying that the rhinemaiden _herself_ might interest him. Which would not have been entirely without truth, especially looking as she did now, with that charming smile on her blood-red mouth, and her long hair, dark as a moonless midnight, falling across her shoulder to brush lightly against one porcelain cheek as she dipped her head forward a little more, eyes shining like all the treasures of a dragon's hoard beneath the fringes of long, black lashes. He really couldn't help the half smile that overtook him as a human expression that he'd heard somewhere came to mind, uttered by a drunken old man, stumbling upon a pretty woman. The man had loudly slurred, "Whooooa, somebody get me a glassh! 'Cause I just found me... a _tall_ drink... of _water!"_ That was Lorelei. In so many ways. Anyone with any kind of perception could see it. But the troll warrior supposed that Lorelei had more than likely heard plenty of such flirtatious replies to what she had just asked him, _many_ times before, and so he decided against it.

In the exact same moment that he was about to make an _actual_ request of his comely hostess, however, a slight smirk came onto the Germanic river-fairy's face and a particularly bright twinkle sparked in her eye, as she revealed a (remarkably undamaged) bottle of wine from the large satchel that she'd had with her at the Troll Market for him to see. "Perhaps something rare and fine to start with?" She gave the bottle the lightest little spinning toss in her hand and grasped it again. "It would seem such a waste and shame if I had to drink this all alone," she said, and then turned her eyes back to her companion. "Wine itself is nothing altogether extraordinary - from Italy to France and beyond - _but,_ rare it is that one can find any made by _elves_ in the Magyar tradition nowadays." There was a sly smile on her face that would have outdone a fox. Wink's brows went up. _Impressive,_ he thought, as she poured them each a glass of the rare Elf wine. _"Prost,"_ she toasted, and Wink carefully raised his glass to meet hers with a musical _clink!_ Truthfully, Wink would have preferred to have something much stronger than Elf wine, however, such a rare drink paired with the company of such a rare lady as Lorelei was a hard thing to pass up, if one were sane.

They were both just finishing their first glasses of wine when one of the bieresal of the tavern approached Lorelei, carrying a slender white box, and proffered it to her. _"Was bringst du mir?"_ she asked, in a low voice. The bieresal just shrugged, set down the box, and then scurried off after being waved away dismissively by the Rhine daughter. Lorelei's brow furrowed, as she took the lid off the box to reveal a single red rose, fully bloomed, inside with a small folded card. She pulled out the rose first, careful of the thorns on its long stem, and then read the card. Suddenly her eyes rolled skywards with a groan, and a broad, lopsided smile twisted her mouth up and to the left as she shook her head and chuckled, looking at the card.

"What is it?" Wink grunted, curious.

Lorelei's head snapped up to look at him. If it were even possible, it almost looked as though her niveous face both blanched and blushed at the same time, for the quickest instant. "It's... a token of esteem, I guess you could call it," she responded. "From someone that I met... Who would like to know me better." She dropped the card back into the box and closed the lid on it, setting it aside.

Lorelei regarded the rose in her hand for a while, thoughtfully. "Hmm," she sighed, after a minute or so, a sound somewhat like a small wave receding from a great lakeshore. "Red roses are so overdone... To the point of being boring, actually... Oh, I don't fault the gift itself! _Natürlich!_ This rose is a _magnificent_ specimen!" She lifted the rose up to her face, brushing her nose and mouth with its scarlet petals, and breathed deeply. "Exquisite fragrance. Remarkably soft petals. The _color_ is _amazing,_ such a vibrant red is hard to find..." She held the rose away from her face and twirled it carefully between her fingers a bit, her look still thoughtful. "A nice gesture... But in all honesty, I think I would have been _more_ impressed if it hadn't been done with an obvious cliché," she sighed, with a smile that wasn't a smile on her lips. With that, she let the rose fall to the gleaming top of the bar, soundlessly. She figured that she would dry the thing and use its crushed petals in her next batch of lip-rouge - something which she made herself, from red wine, honey, finely ground rose petals, lamb's blood, and powdered paprika in a sweet, natural wax base... and which now stained her wine-glass. She quickly snagged a napkin from behind the bar and wiped away the offending smudge, before wiping away the rest of the stuff from her mouth. There was no need for it anyway, she wasn't going out or entertaining paying patrons, no need to impress anyone at the moment. It did not escape Wink's powers of observation that, even without it, the rhinemaiden's mouth was still a flush, ruddy color on its own, though not quite as dark. The silver troll glanced over at a table that would seat two, and made a gesture towards it with his head. Lorelei answered his silent question with a single nod and came out from behind the bar.

Wink could understand Lorelei's point of view towards her gift, now lying on the bar. It wasn't hard to see how someone like her would inevitably grow to be disenchanted with the same old flowers, chocolates, and empty words and promises from hopeful admirers, over and over again. No real thought put into the gesture beyond a desired result. A woman deserved better than that. As they both seated themselves comfortably across from each other at the table, he rumbled, "I am curious, if roses are not quite to your liking, may I ask what is?" She didn't even have to think for an instant when she smiled and immediately answered, _"Seerosen,"_ as she poured them another glass. "Like the soft, blushing ones that bloomed on the surface of the large pond where my family lived in Bavaria, or the pure white ones that grace the small lake by the house that my mother retired to..." The fond, faraway look on her face made Wink smile. She continued, "But, regrettably, there isn't a floral service in all of Manhattan that has figured to arrange water lilies into any kind of bouquet, as of yet." She raised her glass in a little mock toast to that, and took a sip, making the troll warrior laugh softly.

"Have you _ever_ gone back to Bavaria since you left?" he grunted. "Or have you spent your whole life since in North America?" She nodded at his last inquiry. "Do you ever think of visiting? Seeing your old home again, or touring the Rhine?" Wink started into his own glass as Lorelei smiled at his questions. _How prettily she smiles,_ Wink thought.

"Bavaria, _ja,_ particularly during Oktoberfest, but the Rhine..." She trailed off, looking ponderous. _"Ich weiß nicht,"_ she finally said. "I'm not so sure that there would be a point." She raised her gaze to look Wink in his good eye, and he could see dubious uncertainty showing clear in her expression, and strangely, even hints of a regret that was not her own. "Even if I did go, I would not get to see it as I would really like to. Even with environmental efforts in motion now, too much has been done to the river since the time that the industrial pollution of it started. The full damage done will still not be _undone_ for many years yet. Much time and work will have to pass before I ever get the chance to know the Rhine in the ways that I really want to..." Her voice became very soft and she looked away, mumbling, "The ways that my mother once knew it."

Wink reached out with his nonmechanical hand to gently touch the Germanic faery-woman's arm, resting on the table, as much in sympathy as it was to bring her back from whatever thoughts she was getting pulled towards losing herself in. He did not want heavy thoughts to preoccupy his fair companion, particularly when they were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Lorelei looked back up at him and smiled, appreciative of his caring. "But, sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together, _ist das nicht so?_ If most of the surviving Rhine-folk had not been driven inland by the pollution, trying to _continue_ to survive, then my mother would have never met my father on her travels, in Bavaria, and then where would I be?" The familiar sparkle lit once more in her auriferous eyes and her smile widened. "Certainly not here, sharing this excellent wine with such excellent company!" She raised her glass again, and took another sip of wine.

As Wink raised his glass to do the same, he suddenly stopped mid-drink when she asked casually, "So... How go things with Silverlance and his lady?"

The silver troll just managed to choke down his wine and keep from sputtering the deep red liquid all over the table and his charming hostess. He supposed that he shouldn't have been at all surprised, considering that talk everywhere was all abuzz around the subject of the Crown Prince of Bethmoora and his mortal lady, but it caught him off-guard all the same, coming from Lorelei. It must have been the wine, she was typically rather discreet with whatever was in her spoken words - never quite laying any of her cards on the table, as it were.

"So," he grunted, "you know of that, then?" Again, the sly, foxy smile (which looked quite fetching on her, really, Wink thought) bloomed on her luminous face, showing delicately pointed white teeth, sharp and shining against the soft red of her mouth, and the river maiden gestured at the tavern about them and spoke in a sort of improv verse.

_"Faery rumors fly quite fast,_  
><em>When word-of-mouth is quick to pass<em>  
><em>From tongues made loose<em>  
><em>By souls made brave<em>  
><em>With what they seek in Fafner's Cave."<em>

The spirit of her wide grin and impish laugh right then was infectious, and Wink could not help grinning back, as she explained, "Talk of all sorts is cheap to come by in a tavern such as mine, _mein lieber Wink,_ I can tell you _that_ for free." She brought one foot up from the floor and put it on the seat of her chair, wrapping her arms around her bent leg, so that she could tilt her head to the side and rest it on that knee. "But tell me, has she changed his disposition _significantly_ at all, or does he still bear that legendary grudge against 'They who build towers of iron and glass?'"

Wink hadn't noticed that he was staring at the elegant curve of Lorelei's exposed neck once her long sleek hair had fallen away from her shoulder to drape behind her bent knee when she tilted her head. He quickly snapped himself out of it and considered the rhinemaiden's query - for her part, Lorelei smiled faintly and partly hoped that the troll didn't notice the barest tinge of color that touched her cheeks when she caught his unconscious looking - but at length, knowing that he could trust her, he answered, "It is hard to say, as far as the lady is concerned." The great silver warrior shrugged his big, burly shoulders, and finished off his glass of wine with one final swig. "Time can only tell how things may yet turn out between my Prince and the mortal woman." Lorelei poured him another glass of wine and he gave her a grunt of thanks. "As to the ages-long resentment that he bears towards her race-" his face took on a wry look "-I don't believe that any of the 'legends' surrounding it will see any true reason to be dissolved at any time soon," he growled, before taking the first sip of his next glass.

"Hm," Lorelei sighed disappointedly, losing her smile. "Such a pity," she remarked quietly.

Wink could only stare at her in something akin to amazement once it hit him that she was being completely sincere. When he remembered to move again, he muttered, "A very forgiving sentiment, coming from someone like you; considering what their kind did to your kin," as he lifted his glass to his mouth again for another sip.

Lorelei's head snapped up to look at him. _"Forgiving?"_ She exclaimed. _"Nein!_ I've never blamed them for any of it."

Wink about nearly dropped his wine-glass. "N-no?" he stuttered, utterly incredulous.

"No," the river faery declared. "If I were to blame anything, I'd put the blame with the _lousy_ ideas of corporatism and profiteering that parented the whole mass-industrial movement to begin with. Ideas which, I might mention, show no racial favoritism _at all_ when it comes to what minds they'll infect. In just the time that I've lived, I've seen plenty of business cartels - human _and_ goblin alike - commit countless atrocities against all manner of life, simply for the sake of _profit."_ She practically spat her words with disgust, her eyes and teeth flashed, her fingers bent of their own accord into a slight curl with the instinct to claw something, and for a moment she looked quite fearsome - as much as any proud daughter of the Rhine could - and somewhere in him, Wink felt a glimmer of admiration as he watched her, in her just-barely-contained and seething display.

Lorelei looked away towards the floor and took in a deep breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh - similar to the soft but heavy wind that carries the thick clouds before a rainstorm - calming herself. "Besides," she murmured, her eyes getting a distant, far-off look, and her voice falling into a whisper like raindrops on autumn grass, "I already know and have already seen what happens when blame and punishment are lain on an entire race for something."

Her words nearly froze Wink.

_Oh. That._ He thought.

He hadn't considered _that._

By human reckoning, Lorelei _looked_ as though she were a stunning young woman in her early twenties... As did her mother, as a matter of fact. But the truth was that both mother and daughter had lived out their girlhoods a _long_ time ago - some centuries on the part of the former, and not yet a whole century on the part of the latter - and it was only a well-trained or experienced eye that could catch the subtle mannerisms and characteristics about them that gave away their true age. Lorelei had been _there,_ long ago and far away, in Germany, to witness the rise of the Third Reich and everything that came with it. She had watched as neighbor turned against neighbor for petty jealousies and favors, selling each other out to the powers that rose to rule them all, dividing each other when they should have all seen what their home was turning into - and it wasn't just Jews that were betrayed to their deaths, either. Gypsies, people who were mentally or physically disabled, ethnic Poles, Slavs, and Serbs, "political dissidents" and "social deviants" - the list went on, of "undesirables" who did not fit with the vision of political correctness in that time and place.

But it didn't end there. The human world was only the start. Hitler was one of the men of the Thule Society, a group of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult. Both he and his top-echelon supporters wanted _absolute_ power. It didn't take long at all for the hunt to bleed over into the realm of the Hidden.

Creatures and beings long held in reverence in Germanic myth and beyond found themselves fighting or fleeing for their lives, as leading figures in the Nazi party sought to rout them out all over Europe and use them for their agenda. A great number included among the targets weren't even of faery origin, either, but rather, _mortal_ creatures with unusual forms and abilities - like humans who could bend metal or fire to their will with only a thought, or men with leonine faces and strength. Honest "freaks of Nature." It didn't matter though, _**all**_ were to be found and "made use of" in the eyes of the Thule Society.

Many were captured and broken to the will of the Reich and the Society. Many were killed. But many others were successful in evading or thwarting the will of the Nazis and the Thule Society, though it was not uncommon that they had help. One very famous example of this, around the so-called paranormal world, happened after Karl Kroenen, Hitler's top assassin, became the head of the Thule Society. In 1944, Kroenen and the famed Grigori Rasputin led a top-secret mission to Scotland to do the unthinkable - summon the demon Anung un Rama, and awaken the Ogdru Jahad, the gods of chaos, to rain destruction on the world. Fortunately, a team of the human Allied Forces was able to stop them, and the infant demon was taken into their care, taught to fight for the protection of the world against the minions of evil and forces of destruction - which he did, and very well, for many years unto this day. Some who had encountered him since then had described him as being more of a crude angel than a prince of demons; saying also that he fought "on the the side of God." The same god revered by the particular man that raised him as his own son. How would the world be now, one had to wonder, if the allied humans had failed, and the demon had been molded to the aims of Rasputin and Hitler, like so many other dark creatures that had been scooped up by those power-mad men?

Wink briefly pulled himself out of his thoughts long enough to notice that Lorelei now had her head rested lazily on the table, cradled on the back of one hand. The other arm was stretched out on its own, resting slightly away from her face. She appeared almost angelic, like this, with her eyes mostly closed, the expression on her pretty face soft and neutral.

Neutral... That was a stance that she habitually took, Wink noticed, particularly when regarding any matter of significant sociopolitical controversy. He had never thought to wonder at it before, if she'd had a reason for it, or what that reason could be. How strange. He had always simply supposed that it was just part of the way she was - fair, impartial, not really judging anyone but simply accepting or rejecting them as they were, on their own merits, and never seeking to change them or impose her ideas of what "should be" on them. Why had it never occurred to him that perhaps there was also another reason, some other monster that she wanted to leave behind her and never see it being fed again?

Without even thinking, Wink stretched out his flesh hand with only a single slight movement of his thick wrist, and ever-so-lightly began running his large, rough fingers across the soft, delicate skin of the inner side of Lorelei's forearm.

The river faery's eyelashes fluttered open and shut like the wings of shining black butterflies, briefly, and a smile curled her rosy lips as a soft hum of pleasure escaped her in a sigh, her somewhat foggy brain registering just what it was that the great silver troll was doing. Wink continued his featherlight attentions to her arm, contemplating the pristine white of it. What if Lorelei and her family hadn't left Europe when they did? As soon as they had? He wondered. It had been not that long before the war itself began, when they fled. What if they had waited too long to get away to North America before it was too late? What if she had been discovered by agents of the German ruling powers and captured? What would have happened to her? Would the Nazi scientists have broken her mind and "programmed" her, through torture and manipulation? After that, would they have used her, and her wonderful siren voice as a walking weapon of mind-control, another drone in their war-machine? Would she have been a subject in one of their hideous experiments? Would she have had an inventory code number tattooed to her arm, like so many other mortal and fey prisoners had? _Would it have been right here?_ He thought, as he stroked over a particular spot that was right in the middle of her long, slender forearm. The very thought sickened him, made him feel ill. It made his mechanical fist tighten up with silent, smoldering rage as he imagined a sequence of blue-black digits marring the flawless alabaster of her arm with their lurid contrast.

Lorelei turned her arm, and gently squeezed the troll's rough hand with a drowsy-sounding sigh, her eyes opening again. She lifted her head to look up at him, pure empathy shining from those aurulent eyes at the massive warrior's inner distress for her sake at what could have been and yet never was. The scowl that had found its way to Wink's battle-scarred face softened under her understanding gaze, and he relaxed into a faint smile, which she returned as she let her head fall to rest on the back of her other hand on the table again, closing her eyes, brushing her thumb back and forth over the rough hide of his hand, softly as snowfall, as she still held it.

_No more of these thoughts,_ the silver troll said to himself, determined to not let any sort of dispiriting mood overtake him or the beautiful faery woman that he sat with for the remainder of the evening. He once again took to languidly trailing his large fingertips over her hand and arm, going in slow, complicated patterns up and down her skin, and tracing to the end of each of her long, slender fingers. She really was beautiful, he thought, looking at her, with that soft smile on her deep rosepetal mouth, her face as fair and serene as a full moon shining from the night-darkness of her hair, spread out a little across the table behind her head. Here and now, if he'd had the mind or care for it (which he didn't), he would have been hard-pressed to name anything more exquisite than this.

Reflecting on his actions later, he would wonder lightly just what it was _exactly_ that made him so bold right then. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was something else. It didn't actually matter, either way. All the same, Wink's eye moved to Lorelei's slender shoulder, essentially bare from the cut of the black, spaghetti-strap top that she wore. His fingers were not long in following the path that his eye took.

Lorelei's faint smile pulled itself wide at this, though her eyes remained shut. She was among those creatures that had an _outrageously_ acute sense of touch, and she would certainly have been lying if she had said that she wasn't _thoroughly_ enjoying the sensation of strong, warm, leathery troll fingers moving with such gentleness across the skin and muscles of her exposed shoulder at that moment. The river-maid all but purred with pleasure, much to Wink's own satisfaction. As his fingers inched their way on up her spine to the back of her _neck_ though, she really couldn't help herself, and a deep, low sound escaped her, full of sheer bliss.

There was magic in that sound.

She hadn't meant for it to happen, of course. It was involuntary, simply a slip in self-control, it happened to even the best (and all the worst) amongst the unseen folk of the world. Things would just _happen_ when certain conditions were right, or when extreme emotion overcame them. A sudden burning glow in the eyes, a spark of flame in a clenched fist, a slide into a burrish growling voice, a wavering slip in glamour, an automatic reflexive unsheathing of claws, a change in color somewhere in the skin or fins or eyes or scales, maybe people or things in the area somehow _floating_ inexplicably, or a slight metamorphic shift - all were examples of what could well be expected, whenever one became very angry, hurt, excited, afraid, jealous...

Unintentional as it may have been, though, the fact remained: _there it was_ - shimmering underneath the audible frequency of her voice. While it didn't exactly register on Wink's _less-than-completely-sober_ awareness, it certainly _affected_ him all the same.

It stroked down his nerves - from his ears, down his neck, through his shoulders, out through the bones of his arms and ribs, and disappearing somewhere down his lower spine - like the touch of something _solid!_ Like the sensation of standing in still water, and then feeling the soft, curling caress of languid, whirling eddies started by the slow wave of someone's arm, disturbing the water under the surface. It made his every little hair stand on end, this same thing that had soothed the ferocious spirits of _dragons_ and lured wayward humans to their watery _deaths,_ for generation upon generation back through time, and continued to do so, even to this day. Even _now._ Wink was lucky to keep his fingers on Lorelei's swan-like neck moving steadily, and only _just_ remembered how to breathe in and out, for the seconds that it took for the effects of that _amazing_ sound that the Rhine daughter had made to subside from his system.

_"Das ist wunderbar,"_ the river-faery breathed, happily hanging in the haze of easy rapture that Wink had her in. As he started to work in her hair, she groaned out, "Oh, curse you a thousand times over for discovering my weakness. Mmmm..." Both of them grinned like Cheshire cats and chuckled heartily at her quip, and Lorelei carefully turned her head so that she could angle it to look up at him, while still having it rest on the table. The warm smile on her face as she looked at him was captivating, filling the warrior with a warm glow from the inside that he had not felt for his lovely friend before - but was _not at all_ displeased to be feeling now - and he gladly returned that smile, as he found himself caught in the coruscating glimmers that were in her beautiful, dragon-gold eyes, under the soft lights in the tavern.

Wink's feelings were not lost on Lorelei's empathic senses. The shining cocoon of contented happiness and well-being that surrounded him was beautiful, and each luminous thread of it was leaning, bent delicately, towards _her._

The notion of _that_ gave her a bit of a fluttery feeling in her insides, but it didn't do anything to overwhelm the comfortable warmth of her own contentment at that moment, not really. She was no stranger to these feelings. She had felt them before. Not _many_ times, but more than once. Such was the case of reality when one is looking forward to their _one-hundredth_ birthday in the not-so-far future and many, _many_ more birthdays after it. Wink had surely felt these things before, too, in his thousands of years of living, but how often? She knew that he hadn't felt like this about _her_ before, in the years that they'd so far been acquainted with each other... and she couldn't say that she held any aversion towards the idea of it, now that it seemed he did.

She smiled all the more to think of what some of her sisters would say to _that,_ if they could see her now... Well, out of the handful or two of the scattered siblings that she _knew_ about, anyway; siblings begotten from previous involvements that her mother'd had over the centuries, before she fell in love with Lorelei's father.

Lorelei had effectively been raised in the same manner as an only child, but there were some sisters and a few brothers that hadn't made themselves strangers in her life, and right now she could just _picture_ some of her sisters' expressions. Some of them would gawk in horror at seeing her like this with a _troll._ Some would laugh, or roll their eyes and shake their heads as if to say, "Yes, that's our _adventurous_ Lorelei for you. She must get it from her father." Not that it would matter or that she would even _care_ at all, unless they tried to make an actual _problem_ for her out if it, but they knew better than that - that she'd do what she liked anyway. It was no secret to anyone that Lorelei found a certain visceral charm in creatures and beings that most of her kin - and several other races, like humans and elf-kind - would generally find to be brutish, beastly, fearsome, monstrous, or even grotesque in their outward manner. Once, one _uniquely_ gifted but actually very _human_ patron of her establishment had half-joked, "You've got a thing for the _freaky creatures!"_ upon discovering (rather invasively) that their hostess' first crush, at the tender age of thirteen, had left her with a particular lasting soft spot for males of the lycanthropic persuasion.

A thing for creatures? Perhaps. But even so, it wasn't the obvious things that truly appealed to Lorelei. It never was.

Many of those "freaky creatures" that she felt so drawn to had traits that she couldn't help responding to, instinctually. Like their ferocious spirit, or their straight-forward manner, or their cunning minds, subtle things that she greatly admired and was all the more charmed by. And Wink - the massive, silver, troll warrior - was nothing, if not a being of a _most_ admirable sort in the eyes of Lorelei, in _so_ many ways. It was all just facts of Lorelei's nature, facts that certainly worked in his favor at the moment.

Wanting to return the favor he was giving her, Lorelei lifted her head up from where it rested, gently took Wink's large hand, and guided it to rest palm-up on the table. Wink gave no objection and no resistance whatsoever as she did this, nor as she then laid her head to rest inside his open palm, face looking at him, her soft cheek warm on his leathery skin. His great, trollish fingers could still easily curl into her hair, but now she was in a better position to return the attention to some degree, as she glided her fingers along the skin of his arm past his wristguard, similarly to how he'd done to her, earlier. Both were smiling as Wink worked in Lorelei's hair, and the slender fingers of the river fairy sent light, curling trails of sensation over the silver troll's hide, soft as rainfall. At some point, Lorelei languidly closed her eyes, and with movements so minute as to only be readily perceptible to just herself, brushed her cheek in the tiniest of strokes across on the skin of Wink's palm. A well-contented sigh escaped the great warrior, when -

_DONG DING DANG DONG! DING DANG DING DONG!_

A clock behind the bar sounded out a set of chimes that would have had an old-time Swiss clockmaker beaming with pride if it were his own work, and turning green with envy if it were not. Lorelei became immediately yanked out of the half-haze surrounding the two of them and regarded the timepiece. Wink was just a bit dazed by the abruptness of how their moment was shattered. But... _was_ it a moment? Was it hours? How much time had passed since he came to Fafner's Cave? When had he lost track? Lorelei cursed softly in German and put one hand to her head, "I re-open soon, and I'm going to be utterly useless on the morrow if I don't get some sleep now." Upon hearing this, there was a part of Wink that waged an already-lost battle at what her statement implied. Wink was going to have to leave now, and the greater character of Wink respected that and was resigned to it, that he would have to depart from the company of his beautiful hostess and go elsewhere, finish his errands, perhaps. But a small, instinctual part was not resigned to this at all and very much wanted to stay, and roared in protest at the _damn clock_ that had so rudely intruded on the marvelous time he was having with Lorelei.

Lorelei didn't blame him, she felt quite similarly, and sighed ruefully, before her aspect assumed a resigned smile, as she gave his great hand a small squeeze and asked, "Is there anything that I can get for you, before you take your leave?" Thinking back to earlier, before she had brought out the elf wine, Wink answered that he would take a case of troll beer, if she had any, and was going to cork the wine bottle while she fetched the beer for him, when she said, "You can take the wine with you, as well, there's only about a glass-and-half left of it now, anyway." Wink finished corking the wine and put it with his other things that he'd left by the bar when he came in, his face carried a faint echo of Lorelei's foxy smile, knowing the subtle token that she was giving him. In the court of elves, since the days of yore, it might have been kerchiefs or locks of hair. Here and now it was a nearly-finished bottle of wine from a night well-spent in each other's company, and it seemed the more fitting for the two of them, he thought.

Lorelei showed Wink to the door, and he warmly thanked her for the drinks, the hospitality, and the good company, and turned to go. He'd hardly gone five paces on his way when she called out, "Hey Wink!" The silver troll stopped and turned to look back over his shoulder at the river maiden. There was a kind of hopeful flicker in the dim city lights bouncing off her aurulent eyes, and a sort of shyness in the smile that played over rosy mouth, and she seemed to hesitate just a little before she said, "Don't be a stranger around here, huh?" Wink smiled broadly at her open invitation to come by more often, and nodded firmly, his good eye never leaving hers. Eyes dancing, wide smile firmly planted on her snowy face, a warm _"Auf Wiedersehen"_ were her last words to him as Lorelei went back inside and Wink turned back to his own way.

Wink had a lot to think about as he made his way back to the Troll Market. Lorelei didn't seem to object to this new development between the two of them... Perhaps he should pursue it? He was a warrior, and therefore never one to back down readily from any sort of challenge (particularly when such a fine woman was concerned, he thought with a grin), and he knew that she rarely if ever said "no" to an adventure when presented with one, and _this_ certainly _felt_ like it could turn out to be quite an adventure, of sorts... No reason that he could see to walk away from it, he thought, and smiled to himself all the more.

His next thought nearly obliterated that smile, though, as he realized that she had no knowledge of what Prince Nuada planned for humanity with the Golden Army. Precious few besides himself and the Princess did. Even with Lorelei's intuitive and empathic abilities being what they were, she _would_ know the hate that Prince Nuada bore humans, but not what he planned to _do_ about it - she was _em_pathic, not _tele_pathic! After tonight, after what Wink had finally realized about Lorelei... If she ever knew what he was helping Silverlance to do... Could he ever even bring himself to tell her? He battled long and hard with himself over this, nearly all the way up to the Market entrance. In the end, he decided that he would not tell her. Ever. Not while he lived. His first duty was to his prince, no matter what he felt for the river faery...

Even if it turned out to be the only act of cowardice that he ever committed in his whole millenia-long life, to hide behind that oath to Silverlance, as long as he could, he would never tell her.

Before he set about finishing the rest of his errands, there was one thing that Wink absolutely _had_ to do first. He strode through the crowds of the Troll Market to the magically warded "street" corner where Yang had her natural, glass and crystal flowers spread out on gold-embroidered white silk for customers to admire. The Onibi sea-faery was not long in spotting his approach.

"Good evening, Wink," Yang murmured, placing her palms flat to the ground and bowing low from where she sat. The silk of her kimono rippled with all the colors of the ocean under moonlit darkness. When the shōjō straightened from her bow she smiled at the silver troll. "Is there anything that I can do for you?" She asked, her voice soft and strong as an ocean wave when the tide is low.

"Yes," Wink replied, his deep, rumbling voice contrasting quite a bit with Yang's. "I need to know: how much for a custom arrangement of water lilies, and how soon can it be delivered to the East Village in Manhattan?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN -** Yes, I really _do_ think roses are generally overdone and boring, and _much_ prefer water flowers over any other kind - or hand-picked wildflowers if I'm getting a bouquet, since water flowers don't easily come in bouquets. :(

- The specific "tall drink of water" pick-up line scenario referenced was from the Disney movie _Tangled,_ but the line itself is nothing new, I've heard it before.

- Say whatever you like, but Hungarian (Magyar) wine is _**amazing.**_

- To anyone who thinks it's weird or creepy that Lorelei has lamb's blood in her lip-rouge: _HELLOOOOOOO!_ She's a Germanic _faery!_ 1) Faeries are _all about_ blood and creepy stuff like that, and 2) she comes from a race of creatures that DROWNS people, among other things. I don't think a mere _lamb_ is anything to sneeze at in the grand scheme of what someone like _she_ could be capable of, if she allowed herself to be. And hey, don't think that Wink is gonna care. Trolls hide in caves and under bridges and have a habit of eating unsuspecting kids... The _GOAT_ kind, you sillies! Haven't you ever heard the story of _The Three Billy Goats Gruff?_ ;) (Though human kids feature on the menu in some stories, too.)

- The "sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together" comes from a quote attributed to Marilyn Monroe.

- The specific examples of intense emotions in the "freaks and monsters slip up sometimes" segment was taken from a scene in a _Big Wolf On Campus_ episode (Tommy "wolfs out" over an impending video-game defeat, HA!) The examples of the various creature _reactions_ were from many different stories, movies, TV shows, and so on.

- The "freaky creatures" jibe was actually made by a buddy of mine who often expressed strong interest in having telepathy as a preternatural ability. I figured it fit in this situation.

- Kroenen and Hellboy are not mine, for the same reason as Mr. Wink. More's the pity.

- Song choice ideas for Wink & Lorelei? Anyone?

_**FYI:**_

1) I really want readers to keep note of the contrasting tones between the Nuada/Dylan and the Wink/Lorelei relationships, which I reeeaally hope I managed to illustrate in this short. Whereas the N/D dynamic is colored with forced, bottled-up ache and tension shared between the two of them, the W/L pair serves as a kind of flipside for that, marked by the open ease and comfort that surrounds _their_ relationship, making the troll and the rhinemaiden a good foil for the elf and the human, if I do say so myself. :)

2) NO Lorelei would _never_ go behind Wink's back, btw, she is _not_ that kind of gal, and she actually _likes _him, just so y'all know.

_**A warm shout out goes to **__**xxyangxx2006**__**, my fellow water-fairy in this awesome fairy-tale world!**_** :)**

Please notify me (IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner) of any and all spelling and grammar errors, typos, transposed words, or missing words! Thank You! :D


	2. Coruscation Part 1

**From LA Knight** **to OceanFire9** **regarding shots at Flash-fiction for the "Once Upon A Time" fic-verse of the Hellboy 2 fandom:**  
><em>"How would you feel about attempting the word prompt thingies? You don't have to do all of them (actually, you don't *have* to do any of them, but you know what I mean). I think it would be interesting to see what you do with them. And you could make them all about Wink and Lorelei if you wanted. Or whatever. Just curious." <em>

**What OceanFire9** **said to LA Knight** **about that:**  
><em>"Sure, send me a list and I can do that to help slake your craving [for WinkLorelei] in the meantime. Lol! :D It might also allow me to get out a few of my ideas that just don't fit in the other shorts, somehow."_

_**TIME/PLACE:**_ Within the conceptual "Once Upon A Time" universe. Some of these flash-prompts may take place in Wink and Lorelei's respective and collective pasts, others in their _possible_ future, others will even take place in their dreams. Still others may include the jealous fenris character (and yes, he IS the one that gave Lorelei the rose in _"All's Fair In Love, War, and Drinking")._

NOTE ON LINGUISTICS: Some of the stuff that happens in Germany will be written in English, just for simplicity's sake, but when multiple languages are present in the same time and place, then the German dialogue will be written in actual German. (Mein Gott, I feel so horrible now). :P

NOTE ON CANON/FANON: Not all of these flashes may end up being part of the continuity, so keep an open mind, _**they're just ideas**_ _**answering prompts**_. LA Knight can pick and choose whatever elements she likes.

So begins the first part of the flash-fictions series featuring Wink and Lorelei

_Update Mar 11: All flashes in this installment of the Coruscation series have been chosen as canon by LA Knight._

_Update Apr 3: With the posting of Chapter 55 of "Once Upon A Time," __**Telephone**__ is now semi-canon due to minor plot discrepancies, but the rest of the shots in its story-chain are still fully canon._

* * *

><p><strong>COMFORT<strong>

_"Halt mich,"_ the tall river maid breathed in a heavy sigh, and the silver troll pulled her close, wrapping his great arms about her slender form. Her day had been _crap._

Some idiot centaur had started a bar fight, but instead of just "shoving off" after getting thrown out by two other patrons, he came right back in and then everything snowballed to "worse and worse" from there. The whole _Cave_ was a mess! It would have to be closed for at least a couple of _weeks_ to get it all back to right again! Lorelei always hated whenever stuff like this happened, but such was the life of a tavern owner, as her father well knew and her mother was quick to learn.

Lorelei didn't even want to think about any of it right now. It all just sucked.

She very lightly brushed her fair, snowy cheek against the muscled planes of Wink's huge chest, taking careful, calming breaths. He smelled like deep, earthen places, very old leather, city smog, and something else that was warm and animalistic and could only be distinctly defined as "troll." _"Lass mich nicht los,"_ she murmured.

"Never," rumbled Wink, in his low, deep voice, putting his flesh hand to her head and gently working at the muscles of her skull through her hair.

* * *

><p><strong>RAIN<strong>

Wink didn't really care for cold water all that much, but in truth, he never felt warmer. He was standing on the roof of the building that housed Fafner's Cave and Lorelei's home, in the company of said rhinemaiden, and she was looking _quite_ happy in the April torrent that poured down from the silvery heavens, utterly drenching her from head to toe, making her long black hair even darker somehow from all the water slicking through her thick tresses, and making her cotton spring dress, embroidered with gold stitching that formed a paisley pattern, cling to her every slightest curve.

Lorelei blinked some of the raindrops from her long eyelashes, the fondness in her golden eyes like sunlight on Earth under the cloud-laden sky. _"Schatzen,"_ she said softly, gazing at the great troll, and brushing a few fingers over the shining droplets that clung to his hide. "Each little raindrop on you looks like a shimmering silvered jewel."

* * *

><p><strong>EARS<strong>

Wink _had_ to know what he was doing. How could he not? The troll had spent so much of his life in the company of elves, he _had_ to know just what kind of sensitivity the eartips of sentient pointy-eared races held!

Regardless, sometimes his lingering caresses over Lorelei's neck and up to her face and hair would ghost about the skin on her skull just behind the shell of her ear... and sometimes one of his great fingers would "accidentally" glide over the subtly pointed tip of her ear. Every single time, he would either smile _too_ innocently or get a very wicked twinkle in his eye with each time that the rhinemaiden gasped, bit her lip, or softly groaned - her eyes dilated and burning with primal dragonfire.

* * *

><p><strong>DEATH<strong>

1930s

It was an easy thing, really, just let the need to survive take you over, move you, propel you into action.

Instinct, ancient and unrelenting.

But looking at him now... at the maimed soldier in her arms... there comes a hard new angle to her respect for life and the balancing act that it holds with death, and she knows what she must do. She will not condemn him, regardless of what he would have done to her and the two little ones with her, as she was bringing them to her mother's tavern to meet with _their_ new mother - their adopter, now that their real family lies in the clutches of this man's masters.

Does he even _know_ what he does? Or rather, _did._

He lies dying in service to his fuhrer, because of her actions.

She and the little ones would have been in a far worse position... _also_ for the fuhrer, because of his actions.

But she _will not_ condemn him for what he would have done. Not. Like. This.

She holds him closer, her breath steady while his is ragged from bleeding out. She flinches from the throbbing pain that sets in from where the bullet that he fired nicked her side, just below the ribs. She brushes her fingertips across the ragged wound in his neck where her pointed teeth had found their mark and sunk in just long and hard enough for her to get his own gun turned on him, downwards to the slick, bloody holes in his chest and torso where she managed to fire the last two shots into him.

She bends her head, mouth towards his ear, and murmurs, "One day, Germany will curse you; you can die knowing this. All the same, I will not curse you, not like _this._ For Germany - the whole _world_ - does not need more suffering."

With that, she puts a hand to the side of his face, the other one to his shoulder, and with a hard, quick _*snap!*_ she ends his suffering. Kindness, especially in mercy to your enemies, is not always gentle.

* * *

><p><strong>TOUCH<strong>

The first time that Wink had been subject to Lorelei's magical voice getting away from her when they were alone together, it had been an accident, and _oh,_ what a beautiful accident it was! But as the days and weeks went by, and more and more was allowed between them, well... He enjoyed pleasing Lorelei, but his reward was _more_ than just the smoldering smiles, the reciprocated caresses, and the satisfaction of knowing the fact that he'd been able to make her feel wonderful.

There was _fire_ under her voice, clear and smooth as water, and he _felt_ the touch of both elements - in his skin, in his bones, in all the muscles in between - lighting up and _licking_ at every last one of his nerves like some living thing, gliding over every inch of him... And he'd have been lying through his teeth - certainly lying to _himself_ - if he were to say that he wasn't becoming more and more deliberate in his efforts to discover more of what would make the magic in her voice get away from her like that.

* * *

><p><strong>SEX<strong>

"So... Wink and you...?" asked Vica.

_"Ja,"_ replied Lorelei, bringing her cup of hot black coffee to her carmine lips.

_"Istenem!"_ exclaimed Vica, giggling and about as excited as a happy-go-lucky teenager getting an earful of some juicy gossip (not that Vica would ever do such a thing). "So, how does that work?"

_"Was?"_ Lorelei responded, a little puzzled.

"You know... don't you...?" Vica made an 'interlocking' gesture with her twelve fingers.

Lorelei's eyebrows shot up about a mile off her forehead. "Oh!" She said. "That... Well I... He... Hmm..." The rhinemaiden's brow furrowed for a minute, and then she half-in-jest glowered at the young táltos enjoying coffee with her. "You just _had_ to ask _that,_ didn't you?"

Vica's smile was shameless. "Yep!"

Lorelei rolled her auriferous eyes and groaned into her coffee cup, with a smile.

"Well, I mean seriously, I'm curious, because the troll is kind of huge, and you're kind of..." Vica indicated Lorelei in a once-over with her eyes "...not."

"Mmm-hmm," said Lorelei softly, sipping more coffee. "Huge. _That_ he is."

"Is he?" Vica piped up.

_"Was?"_ asked Lorelei.

"You know!" Vica gestured 'down south.' "Huge?"

Lorelei gaped at Vica for two seconds - coffee cup in her hand somehow safely finding its way back to the tabletop - and then began laughing. "You're _horrible!"_

Vica just grinned proudly, "I know." And the táltos joined the rhinemaiden in side-stitch-inducing laughter.

* * *

><p><strong>SENSUAL<strong>

The rhinemaiden was stretched out in the sun on one of the river rocks, moisture and golden flecks of river mica glistening on her skin. It was a forgotten time and place of untold beauty, of rampant magic. The great head of a silver dragon with one scarred eye bent down and gently nuzzled the river maiden's exposed belly, up and down her torso, up her neck, and pausing at her fair cheek. The maiden reached out a slender hand, and softly, tenderly, stroked along the side of the dragon's face. She lifted herself up to meet his gaze, smiling, and he nuzzled her chest as she sang to him, words in the Old High tongue that her grandmother knew, soulful and lovely.

Wink and Lorelei would wonder if the other had the same dream as they did in the morning.

* * *

><p><strong>WEAKNESS<strong>

Wink sat in a corner of the common room of the tavern and watched the happy antics of his Prince with the little Rhine child. She was "teaching" the prince how to waltz, and they were both smiling and having a very happy time of it, until the prince got a mischievous grin on his face, scooped up the little girl and twirled her round and round and round, her black hair and his white-gold hair flying all about them, laughing and giggling wildly. Wink just chuckled to himself and shook his head, smiling.

Nuada set the child down, instructed her to go be of some help to her mother - the tavern owner - strode over to where Wink sat, and took up a seat beside the great troll. "What do you think of little Lorelei?" the Prince asked his vassal.

Wink grunted and shrugged his great shoulders. "A sweet enough child, I suppose. Honestly, Highness, there's not much that I _can_ think, at this point," the warrior rumbled. Then his face took on a sly smirk as he said, "Though she already seems to have made a right fool of _you_ easily enough, to behave like that _in public,_ when I know that you would not deign to allow yourself to be so otherwise."

The elf only laughed heartily with a broad and merry smile, and said, "One day, my friend, she just _might_ make such a fool of you, too!"

* * *

><p><strong>TEARS<strong>

Rhine folk were magnificent, mystical creatures. Companions of dragons and other great and noble beasts, seducers and killers of the unsuspecting wayward wanderer or boat-traveler, lovers of gold and soulful musicians. Their nature was beautiful and terrible, mysterious and fierce. But behind all that innate, primal majesty, they - like many other sentient things - also felt the stings of love, joy, sorrow, and anger, felt them just as deeply as anyone else could, and generally they expressed them just as anyone else did. In anger, they snarled. In sadness, they wept. In mirth, they laughed. No shame in any of it.

Knowing this never changed Lorelei's _individual_ nature. She hated even the very _idea_ of being caught in a state of true vulnerability. The ancient predator deep within her loathed it with a passion beyond words.

Like any woman, there were days when she felt the weight of her world, and there were days when she felt a sadness in her soul that she couldn't even define, days when she thought of curling up in a pair of great, warm arms and just letting him hold her close and tight - of letting him stroke her hair (which she always liked) and growling soothing words next to her ear in his deep, rumbling voice. But she always knew without reservation that she would _never_ let anyone but the stars in the night sky above her ever see her in tears, if she could help it.

* * *

><p><strong>NAME<strong>

_(Sometime Before Chapter 1 of This Fic)_

Lorelei made a point of running Fafner's Cave personally, just as if she were one of her own staff. But that didn't mean that she didn't give herself generous amounts of "time off," as well. Today had been one such day, and she had spent it largely enjoying herself in the rave room. She'd danced with a redheaded vampire, a shadow-shifter in his preferred human shape, a witch and a rogue she-elf had pulled her into a kind of "hot hips trio" that got nearby roars of approval (in some cases, literally), and then there was _him._

She sensed him before she saw him. _Focus,_ hard and clear, and it assaulted her empathic sense like a loud howl in her ears. She turned around to see gleaming copper-colored eyes in a handsome face framed by blond hair and a matching goatee fixed on her. A fenris. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded casually.

Lorelei tilted her head ever-so-slightly to the side, regarding him, waiting. He smiled. It was a dangerous, sly smile that she did not fear, the smile of a wolf. He stalked over from his spot against the wall to the the river-faery, who was smiling in an enigmatic way all her own.

"Enjoying yourself here at my establishment?" she asked, by way of breaking the ice.

Now it was _he_ that tilted his head regarding _her_ for a moment, that wolf's smile never once leaving his face or his gleaming eyes, before he spoke. "Y'know..." he said, the feral, lupine _grrrowl_ in his voice curling and sharpening it into something that made Lorelei shiver imperceptibly, "I do believe... I am." There was a shared grin between them, and then they took to the floor.

It wasn't until the end of the night, as he was about to leave, that he took her by the arm and said, "Hey, I love your place, but I'd like even more to know your name."

Deciding to be coy, the rhinemaiden had smiled and said, _"Ich bin Lorelei. Wer bist du?"_

To her surprise, the wolf-shifter only smiled broadly and answered in her language, _"Ich bin Geri..._ It was a pleasure to meet you."

* * *

><p><strong>SPEED<strong>

Some of the gambling rackets in the underbelly of New York City weren't kept "hush-hush" for the fact that they were illegal in nature. Quite a few of them were for the fact that they were what humans would call "poetry in motion, ala freak-show."

Speed was the name of the game in any tunnel race, but this one wasn't cars. It was horses. Mostly. Nightmares, faerie-nags, kelpies, a couple of centaurs, and a táltos' ló.

_"That_ one is actually Vica's horse," Lorelei said to Wink of the ló, from where they stood with other spectators on the sidelines. "She's just letting her brother's friend, Julius, borrow it for the race." She turned to look Wink directly in the eye. "Did you know that he asked me to marry him one time?"

The troll scoffed, "I take it that you said 'no.'"

"No I said 'yes,'" she returned, sweetly.

Wink was nonplussed, and it showed on his trollish face. "But you and he aren't-?"

_"Nein."_ The river faery was smiling her fox-like smile again, with that sly gleam in her eyes.

"So what happened?" the silver warrior inquired, very much full of anticipation to hear her answer.

The river maid gave a very light shrug of one of her slender shoulders and said, "Well, he sobered up in the morning, and then apologized _profusely_ to both me and his boyfriend."

Wink laughed hard and roariously. He was only drowned out by the thundering hooves of the contenders in the race, dashing at full-speed to their prize.

* * *

><p><strong>WIND<strong>

Lorelei's hair was quite long, easily caught up by the wind, tossed and fluttered. Whenever the wind blew she seemed to go still, just to feel it breathing on her, over her, in the space all around her, kissing all the little nerves in her skin.

Wink hoped that he could manage to be as thorough in his attentions to Lorelei as the wind always was.

* * *

><p><strong>JEALOUSY<strong>

She was the best thing that had happened to him ever since he'd been turned. Geri craved everything about Lorelei, she was _literally_ like something right out of a fairy-tale. Her shining hair as black as the deepest dark of night that he prowled through, her face as fair, bright, and beautiful as the moon that he howled to, her mouth as red as the warm blood that he savored on his tongue with every kill. Her whole manner was mysterious and enticing, nothing like the human _meat_ that he always gorged himself on for whatever appetites needed slaking.

But she wasn't his. Not yet.

Still, it wasn't uncommon that Geri would feel his hackles rise when he'd come to her bar and see her engaged in some flirtatious banter with a faun, or whenever this one silver cave troll that frequented the place put a hand on her waist or her back and she'd smile at him, and _certainly_ every time that she got a wolf-whistle from _another_ lycanthrope and she'd wink right back at them.

But he supposed that in the end it didn't matter. He wasn't going to give up on her. She was worth it, and they both had the luxury of time.

These _clowns_ already felt the pang of envy when they saw her dancing with _him_ on her days off, and he'd enjoy flaunting it in their faces every day after she finally accepted him in every way. 'Til then, the city was full of blondes and redheads that would "cater to" any frustration he might have, no problem.

* * *

><p><strong>HANDS<strong>

There were very few times in Wink's life that he regretted - really, truly, actually regretted - the loss of his right hand.

He often enjoyed how he could use the powerful mechanical monster to bash his way to the upper-hand of a brawl (pun only partially intended), how the elbow-spike that was part of the socket could deliver a quick, deadly jab to any foolish bastard behind him, and how he could chain-launch his hand to grab a quick ride hitched on a cargo train, if he needed one, or use it like a grappling hook to scale up the side of some sheer height, be it a cliff or a building. His abilities as a warrior, and as a capable troll in general, were only enhanced all the more by it, he always felt.

But his metal hand could not feel. Not heat. Not texture. Not pain, nor pleasure. Nothing. It was only cold metal. There was no life in it beyond the life that his will gave it. There was nothing beyond pressure, density, and solidity that he could sense with it.

Instinct and old reflex sometimes got the better of him, though, when he was alone with Lorelei, the current light of his heart, and as he would caress and explore and greedily run his flesh-and-blood left hand all over her soft, warm body, sometimes he would also begin to do the same with his right, and then she'd shiver sharply from the sensation of cold metal on her flesh, and he'd realize what he'd been doing.

Those were the rare times that he cursed the day he'd ever lost his hand.

* * *

><p><strong>TELEPHONE<strong>

_(The canon prequel to this is in Coruscation Part 2, at the end, under the prompt-title __**Midnight**__, which co-runs with chapter 53 of "Once Upon A Time.")_

From: drachegold ***** . com

To: dmyers ***** . net

_**drachegold:**_ Is his royal highness with you? I need you to relay something to him for me, right away.

**dmyers:** What are you talking about? Who are you?

_**drachegold:**_ You and I met one cold winter's night in a dragon's cave.

**dmyers:** Lorelei?

_**drachegold:**_ Brava! :)

_**drachegold:**_ I need you to let his highness know that his best friend is safe and well.

**dmyers:** Where the heck has he BEEN? Have you been with him? Is he alright? You realize he's been missing for going on two and a half weeks now, right? Prince LIONRAGE over here has been near out of his mind for him!

_**drachegold:**_ We... had a bit of misadventure when some trouble started at the Midnight Fest that we went to.

_**drachegold:**_ Ja, I've been with him.

_**drachegold:**_ Would you mind if I called your phone? I have something that will keep the line secure.

_**drachegold:**_ Bitte?

**dmyers:** (***) *** - ****

A second later, Dylan's phone rang, and she was glad to hear a fey voice that she recognized on the other end of the line. "Piece of gnome-work," explained the rhinemaiden. "Goblins have the monopoly on clockworks and mechanics, but gnomes seem to have done more thriving in the technological boom. _Na gut..._" Dylan heard the Germanic siren take a deep breath, "Butchers showed up at the Midnight Fest."

Dylan sprang out of her chair. _"WHAT?"_ She couldn't help yelling into the phone.

Lorelei continued, "We got out with our lives, barely, but Wink was in bad form for a few days. I had to put out the word to a few of my more _subtle_ contacts to get proper help for him, but he's been as good as new for some time now." The river-faery got a highly amused-sounding rendition of a "suspicious" tone to her voice. "Though, for _some_ reason he seems to want the two of us to stay isolated and lay low for a few days more. I wonder why?" Clearly she didn't _wonder_ at all. Dylan didn't either, and couldn't help doing a facepalm and smiling.

"Do I even wanna know?" She half-chuckled into the phone.

_"Do_ you?" Lorelei inquired with a sly tone.

"I think I'll pass for now."

"Fair enough," returned Lorelei.

Then Dylan did something that mildly surprised herself and Lorelei. "Are _you_ alright?" She asked.

There was a second-and-a-half pause on the other end of the line. _"Ja,_ I am, actually... My dress was destroyed and I got tossed around pretty hard, but I heal quite fast. No one will even be able to tell there was ever a mark on me to begin with. I decided to contact _you_ instead of Nuada because I didn't trust the possibility of anyone keeping eyes and ears on him - but the elfin courts are generally out of their element with human electronic technology. Use care when you tell Silverlance what I've told you, he will not be pleased to hear that an attempt was made on Wink's life."

* * *

><p><strong>AN - THE E-MAILS AND PHONE-#s OF DYLAN AND LORELEI ARE ENTIRELY FICTIONAL! DO NOT THINK THAT YOU WILL REACH THESE IMAGINARY CHARACTERS BY TRYING TO CONTACT THEM! **

- The theme song for **Name**, when Lorelei meets Geri the fenris, is "Sex" by Oomph! Trust me, go to the YouTube channel of joshua895 for a translation of the lyrics (which aren't all that horrible as you might think from the title) if you don't believe me, but it fits. This would be from Geri's POV and the way that he sees it, of course.

_**CHARACTER NOTES:**_

- Vica is a Hungarian girl name, pronounced "VEE-tsaw" (if you speak English) And she's largely a minor, unimportant character, existing to serve the interests of the Wink/Lorelei arc of "Once Upon A Time," so don't think that you'll see her all that much. Sorry. :P And yeah, she's a táltos, but she's young, and the relationships of her buddies aren't exactly part of her divine business, per se.

- Geri is (as I'm sure you may have guessed) the fenris, a minor but _very_ important character, serving the Wink/Lorelei arc. You'll see him lots. :)

_**NOTE ON THE TITLE:**_

**cor·us·cate**  
><em>[kawr-uh-skeyt, kor-] verb (used without object), -cat·ed, -cat·ing.<br>_To emit vivid flashes of light; sparkle; scintillate; gleam.  
>[from Latin coruscāre to flash, to glitter, to vibrate]<p>

**cor·us·ca·tion**  
><em>[kawr-uh-skey-shuhn, kor-] noun<em>  
>1). The act of coruscating.<br>2). A sudden gleam or flash of light.  
>3). a striking display of brilliance or wit.<br>_Medical Dictionary n_. A sensation of a flash of light before the eyes.

Reflected flashes of sunlight rippling on the waves and swirls of a river shining right into your eyes could also accurately be called "coruscation" on the surface of the water.

_**As always, for ANY typing/transposing errors, be they English, Deutsch, or Magyar, PLEASE let me know so I can fix 'em!**_


	3. 20 Minutes

SUMMARY: What happened during Wink and Lorelei's twenty minutes of "'us' time" at the Troll Market in "Once Upon A Time," _Chapter 40: I Know Him So Well._

A/N - Non-English languages (except for Troll) are in Italics. German translations are at the very bottom (before the "Review" button). The opening section and the closing section of this short will be quotes from chapter 40 of LA Knight's story, in order to better set the scene - those parts will also be in Italics. There may also be a couple of things alluding to or quoted from _When You're Gone part 1,_ which is chapter 37 of LA Knight's story. You'll want to have read _All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking_ (chapter 1 of this fic) before you read this short here, otherwise some parts won't make sense.

(Dis)Claimer: Lorelei = mine & LA Knight's. Everyone & everything else = their respective owners', including the Hellboy-movies-and-comics crew. Copyright infringement not intended.

Enjoy! :)

* * *

><p><em>The Elf whapped his oldest friend on the shoulder. <em>**"Wink."**

_The troll dropped Lorelei's hand as if he'd been burned. "My prince."_

_Grasping for patience - or perhaps the self-control not to laugh, as his friend's embarrassment was both obvious and amusing - the Elf prince repeated, "Meet me at the cordwainer's in twenty minutes. You know the one; the leprechaun's establishment." To ensure that the details of his command had penetrated the ridiculous fog of romance surrounding the pair, the prince reiterated, "Twenty minutes. The cordwainer's."_

_"You do not wish me to accompany you now?"_

_Knowing he was being a bit cruel - and considering that he loved Wink as a brother, the prince also knew he was entitled to inflict such fraternal torments - Nuada replied in a mock-mournful voice, "No, my friend. I fear you have fallen into an ancient and inescapable trap and now other, far more beguiling things than your sworn duty to your liege lord have ensnared your attention."_

_Wink scowled at him when Lorelei laughed._

_Over his shoulder as he walked away, Nuada added, "Enjoy your lady's charms, my friend."_

_The troll glowered after his prince and friend, knowing the Elven warrior was teasing him. A gentle hand on the rough hide of his arm brought his attention back to cream-pale skin, eyes like dragon's gold, and lips as red as garnets. One slender obsidian brow winged upward. "Twenty minutes. Think we can manage to have a simple conversation and a drink in that time? Or do you intend to follow after him and break my maiden heart?"_

_Wink's eye widened as Lorelei, with a single scorching look that turned the troll's blood to molten gold, beckoned him toward a tavern he vaguely recognized as the Black Manticore. The massive troll, one of the greatest warriors in Faerie, followed after the slender rhinemaiden like a lovesick puppy._

* * *

><p>Once they had their drinks in hand, Lorelei stood on her tiptoes and gestured for Wink to bring his ear closer to her. The troll obliged.<p>

"Out that door," she murmured, voice like water whispering over the smooth stones of a river, and indicating a door at the other end of the tavern's common room with a nod in its direction, "is a flight of wide, stone stairs that curves up and to the right, to the upper level of the Market." That sly, fox-like smile of hers that Wink always found so charming blossomed on her red mouth as she said softly, "I know of an out-of-the-way nook up there with a _fantastic_ view over Little Budapest."

The Rhine daughter gently grasped Wink's comparatively huge mechanical hand with her own slender one, and with no effort at all, pulled the troll warrior along with her, his heart beating at such a pace that if someone could have heard it they might have thought to compose a song to the rhythm.

* * *

><p><em>"Hier,"<em> said Lorelei, upon reaching their destination. _"Willkommen in meiner Winkel, mein lieber Wink,"_ she said, with a bright and inviting smile that made Wink feel warm all over. The troll and the rhinemaiden made themselves comfortable on the stone floor of the nook, overlooking the district of the Troll Market known as Little Budapest. New York City - and the continent of North America in general - had plenty of "Little Somewheres." There was Little Italy, Little Tokyo, many cities had a China Town, and New Orleans had its French Quarter, but here in the Troll Market, under the Brooklyn Bridge, was Little Budapest. The scents of goulash and _halászlé_ wound their way up to the odd pair from some of the shops below, and the various lights of different brightness and colors that dotted the whole market here and there cast a charming glow on the scene, as they sipped their drinks.

Suddenly Lorelei's eyes went wide and she smacked her forehead, _"Ach!_ I never did thank you for the flowers that you sent, the last time that you came to Fafner's Cave. That was horribly remiss of me." The river maiden looked at Wink apologetically. _"Vielen Dank,_ they were absolutely lovely. I was-" she was suddenly quite aware of the barest blush that had crept to her face from seeing the grizzled veteran warrior watching her intently as she spoke "-very happy to receive them from you." She smiled at her drink for a moment, but then lifted her head again to look him in the eye, maintaining her general composure despite the flutters in her belly while he looked at her in a way that he had never done before until recently. _"Vielen Dank,"_ she said again. "I loved them, they were very beautiful."

"As you are," Wink murmured in a low, deep-voiced growl. The words were out of his mouth before he even knew that he'd said them. But he meant them. It took not even a millisecond for him to decide to just let his words stand for themselves as they were.

As for Lorelei, there was a very subtle expression of being dumbstruck on her aspect. For dumbstruck she _was,_ though not unpleasantly. She had been called beautiful before - _countless_ times - by family, friends, admirers, (even enemies in some situations) and Wink and Nuada were both included in this group. Either one of them at any given time in her whole life had called her "pretty child" or "lovely girl" - or as she grew up, "child" and "girl" were dispensed with, and it was "beautiful Lorelei" or "my fair lass," or other endearments of similar nature - and they both meant it, but that was as far as the meaning went. Even the last time that he'd seen her, Wink had called her "lovely Lorelei" and "fairest river maiden." But this time, just now, was different from all other times put together. There was something _new_ about the way that he said it. Something with such a raw sincerity that it left her speechless... and it also left dozens of little tiny sparks blossoming just under her skin.

_"Danke,"_ she said softly, though it felt very inadequate to just give the _polite_ reply, but she really couldn't think of anything else that she could say.

"You're welcome," responded Wink. "I am glad to hear that you enjoyed them, I had hoped that you would." He imagined how the tall river maid might have looked when she got them delivered to her door. Soft blushing and pure white waterlilies, and a few that were vivid crimson, all together in a glass bowl, with some enchanted, lifelike, miniature bejeweled _koi_ swimming about them under the water that they floated in (included at Yang's suggestion). Wink wondered if she might have treated them in a similar (albeit more _favorable)_ way as she had her secret admirer's red rose before she let it fall forgotten to the top of the bar, that night that she'd asked him back to Fafner's Cave for some quiet drink and company. When Lorelei held the waterlilies to her face to breathe in their scent, did she softly brush at their petals with her nose and mouth, the way that she had with the rose? Just imagining her flushed, parted lips gently caressing the fragile petals of the water flowers that he'd sent her had him hoping that she did.

Not hearing his thoughts, but responding to his words, Lorelei nodded with a warm smile, saying, "I did."

The stunning faery woman scooted closer to her old friend of many years, leaning against his side, as he put his arm around her.

They had been in this position before - on hilltops, on rooftops, around roaring fires exchanging stories, in various settings throughout all the years that they'd been acquainted - always as friends. Now there was more. They both knew it, they both felt it. And they both welcomed it.

_It has been so_ long _since I felt like this,_ Wink thought to himself, as he held his drink in his left hand and carefully held the comely rhinemaiden to his side with his right arm, very aware of the _warmth_ of her body soaking into that arm, and of the soft weight of her, resting against him along his side and just below his chest where her head would rest between sips of her drink. _So long,_ he thought. He'd had his share of satisfaction with women in his thousands of years of living, to be sure; but it was a very rare and precious thing to feel for anyone as he did now, like floating and freefalling at the same time, with heat in his veins and thunder in his heart every time that she even looked at him... As she did now, eyes like dragon's gold shimmering with jewelescent sparkles reflecting the lights in the Troll Market from under fringes of long, butterfly-soft black lashes, which fluttered delicately against his leather torso armor when she rested her head back against him again.

_"Also... sag mir..."_ Lorelei started after a minute or two. "What brings you and his royal highness here tonight, so serendipitously?" She asked with a smile that Wink thought was _quite_ fetching indeed. "If it is all the same for you to say, that is," she added. Wink thought for a minute, before he found an answer that he felt fit the situation.

"Peace offerings," he said simply.

_"Peace offerings?"_ Lorelei echoed with a short laugh and a wide smile of interested amusement. _"Wirklich? Warum?"_

"My prince's mortal lady," was all that Wink said in reply.

"Ohhhhh," responded the Rhine daughter, _"Ich verstehe."_ She held up a finger to her ruby lips, and then turned it so that the opposite side faced out, indicating that she would keep this to herself. Not that she wouldn't anyway. It was a known fact that whatever secrets Lorelei came by, she _kept,_ and that anything told to her in confidence, _stayed_ in confidence. That was one of the more significant reasons why Wink and the royal twins of Bethmoora trusted her, because she had shown herself to be trust_worthy._

Somewhere off to the side of them, a very scratchy-sounding tape-player was switched on. The sound-quality of the music coming from it made it sound like it had to have been recorded on the tape-player by standing in proximity to the stereo that was originally playing the song that now filled their little corner of the Market. It sounded like Magyar folk music, but a lot more modern.

_"Ich kenne dieses Lied!"_ Lorelei piped up. Often, whenever she was visiting with her friend Vica, a _táltos,_ the two of them would sing this song together, just having fun. Lorelei started to sing along with the tape-player, with a very valiant-but-ultimately-futile-sounding attempt at a Magyar accent (she couldn't quite wrap her mouth around the _ó_ and _é_ sounds), but it was _rivetingly_ beautiful to hear, all the same, and just soft enough that it wouldn't carry beyond their nook.

_"Szeretem az álmok rejtett aranyát,  
>szeretem a táncok tiszta tavaszát,<br>szeretem a csönd égi örömét,  
>szeretem a csókod éjjeli tüzét."<em>

There was a different kind of magic riding the soundwaves of her voice this time, as there had been some nights ago. This time, it was like the exuberance of a warm, whirling puff of air, snatching up leaves and making them dance for joy... Or rather, it was ghosting about Wink's senses and urging _him_ to do so. But with Lorelei having a full conscious hold of herself, here and now, there wasn't such _raw_ power charging it as there had been that recent night before. The troll felt the warmth and the joy of the rhinemaiden's singing, but just barely felt the faint, whispering touch of its magic on any of his physical senses at all.

Yet even that ethereal _whisper-light_ sensation was enough to serve as a reminder to him of that night, and a shiver went through Wink's body at the memory. Absently, his mechanical thumb brushed back and forth over the spot where it rested at the outside of his pretty companion's thigh, and Lorelei, with her naturally highly acute sensitivity to touch, _very much_ felt the troll's inattentive strokes at the side of her leg, but what _really_ held the monopoly on her attention was the web of feelings, like golden flame, around him that her _other_ senses perceived.

The brightest of the strands weaving through his aura was love. She had known for a long time already that he loved her, they were cherished friends, and no matter where circumstance took them when it pulled them apart through the years, somehow it was never that long before it put them back together again - by chance or by fate, neither he, she, nor either of the royal elf twins could figure. But there was a new resonance to this love, more vibrant, and warmer. _"Love is friendship that has caught fire,"_ she had read somewhere once, and the Rhine daughter couldn't honestly say that she disagreed with it.

The next runner-up in the contest to outshine each other, after love, was exhilaration, which was followed by desire. The first of these two she could easily identify with, for she felt it in returning measure herself, but that _last_ one posed a very real threat to the solidity of Lorelei's grip on her carefully-held composure.

_He_ desired her. _Wink!_

The entire effect that it all had together made the river maiden blush and shiver by turns constantly!

Lorelei took another sip of her drink and then looked up at the face of the silver cave troll that had his arm around her. Her heart thudded hard in her chest, and she vaguely wondered if she was still breathing in and out. For the unaccustomed eye - which was primarily the _general_ eye of humanity, elf-kind, and plenty of other so-called "humanoid" races, like Rhine folk - anyone that encountered Wink would take one look at him, see a big hulking scary creature and likely (if they could) _run_ back the direction from whence they'd come, screaming. But to _everyone else,_ who _knew_ what they were seeing, it was a different thing entirely.

Wink was a _warrior,_ and many thousands of years of living a warrior's life had made him brawny and well-formed, with thick, powerful muscles like corded _steel_ evident in his arms, legs, shoulders and chest. Lorelei couldn't say that she knew what he looked like _underneath_ his leather armor, but from the snug fit of it she could guess that his trunk was as well-formed as the rest of him. The silver warrior's grizzled face and body bore the wear and the marks that told of his age and his life - battle scars over his arms and chest, a missing eye, a replaced hand, a broken tusk. The way that Lorelei had it figured, was that if, say, a _human_ were to see Wink on _their_ terms for what he _really_ was, they would probably see something like a viking veteran, with dark silver-gray hair (and an eyepatch, perhaps). Older in years, but still _remarkably_ strong, powerful, and deadly - the kind of being that would give the famed Conan the barbarian a real run for his gold in a fair fight on his best _and_ worst days.

To anyone that _knew_ what they were seeing, Wink was every bit as magnificent and impressive as Nuada Silverlance himself, and _this_ was how Lorelei saw him.

Wink had not taken his eye off of the striking faery woman at his side the whole time since they'd situated themselves on the floor of the nook, and he saw her looking over his features now with those bewitching aurulent eyes of hers, soft smile playing over her crimson mouth. He gave her a smile of his own in return, his one eye gleaming, and was rewarded with a light blush that pulled her smile a little wider.

Suddenly Wink got an idea.

The troll warrior narrowed his one good eye at the rhinemaiden, his smile very slowly getting more and more broad, the gleam in his eye becoming brighter and more apparent, as Lorelei's heart started to beat faster and faster from wondering just _what_ might he be thinking - when she gave a sudden squeak as she was lifted up from where she sat and set across his lap, facing the direction of his right. Before she could say anything, Wink spoke. "Easier this way," he said simply.

"What's easier?" she asked automatically in reaction to his statement.

_"This,"_ he growled, and with that, he used his flesh-and-blood left hand to gently move aside some of her silky black hair that had fallen across part of her face, and from there he slowly massaged the muscles of her skull through her thick, dark tresses. Lorelei immediately relaxed and her eyes fluttered shut as her startled brain forgot almost everything else but the feeling of Wink's powerful fingers moving through her hair, a cat-like smile curling the corners of her cherry lips upwards. Every now and again she would breathe out a sighed _hmm_ of pleasure, and after a few short moments she opened her eyes again... And _there_ were those hypnotizing glimmers in the golden depths of her eyes again, making the veteran warrior forget that he was even still breathing.

The Rhine daughter leaned into Wink's body with a sigh like a spring breeze kissing the still surface of a lily pond, and rested her head against his massive, muscled chest. Her cheek, as fair as a winter's first frost yet warm as a midsummer rain, made soft, slow, velvet strokes against his skin as it brushed back and forth over his hide and sent little electric shocks sparking in his blood. Wink closed his eye for a moment, inhaling the watery scent of her, and letting out a soft, rumbling sigh of his own. He opened his eye again to see Lorelei's elegant, slender fingers idling over the stitches of his torso armor, tracing the lines and over the buckles, skimming up to the top where his armor just ended right below his chest and then trailing back down again.

It teased at him, the way that she did that. He could not feel her touch through his leather armor, and every time that her fingertips skirted at the edge of it, he silently willed them to move up, _up,_ just a little more. Just a little more so that he could feel it. But they didn't move up, instead they moved to the side of her face that wasn't resting on his burly chest, tucking back a stray tendril of her long ebon locks behind her ear, and Wink's eye suddenly became fixed on that ear, on its delicately pointed tip. The troll knew _very_ well, from experience with elves and other fae women of a pointy-eared nature, just _what_ would happen if he slid his finger over that sensitive, snow-white eartip.

_Someday,_ he thought with an inward grin. Not here, not now, but someday. Wink had known the Rhine daughter for decades already, he could wait a few mere days and weeks more for _that._ Wink felt the spot on his chest become even warmer where her cheek rested, and wondered if his enchanting companion had sensed the nature of his thoughts and was blushing. He couldn't help an outward smirk at that.

She finally granted him what he'd desired not half a minute ago before his thoughts took this turn, and traced her fingertips over a few of the battle-scars on his chest. When she was a little girl she used to trace over his scars almost tentatively, fascinatedly, barely even touching them at all as troll and elf-prince told her the stories of how they were gotten. Now her touch was solid, admiring, knowing the story behind each one that she traced, a fond, gentle pride in each stroke over them. Lorelei's touch was slow, smooth, and deliberate, as though she wanted to memorize each line that she traced all over again, anew; as though she were drinking in his history and the very essence of who and what he was through her skin - and Wink _so_ wanted for her to never have to stop, to keep feeling that touch and the warm weight of her resting against him.

But Time, it seemed, was once again not standing in Wink's favor.

Lorelei gave a soft, quivering sigh and lifted her head up. Quietly, resignedly _(almost_ dejectedly), she remarked, "We'll be coming to the end of our twentieth minute shortly... And while I would very much like to keep you a while longer," she smiled softly at him, "I respect you too much to incur the ire of Silverlance upon your head on my account... So I will not be selfish." She heaved another sigh, and lifted herself carefully from Wink's lap to stand up, leaving the places that she had been touching him cool and bereft of her warmth. "Don't worry about returning the tankard you ordered your drink with to the tavern-keep, I'll do that for us both." Wink mumbled something unintelligible along the lines of that being a fine idea as he picked himself up off the stone floor of the nook, not really caring about it even as he said it.

When Wink stood fully upright again, he let his eye linger over the beautiful rhinemaiden that he had been happy to call "friend" for so long... and that he was hoping to perhaps call as something more in the future, and she smiled at him warmly as he took her hand is his - so small by comparison - and rumbled, "Until we meet again, my lady." As before, when they'd met up on the ground-level of the Market, his thumb lightly traced a slow half-circle over her pale knuckles.

Lorelei licked her lips, and there was a tiny, hopeful, hesitant shiver in her voice as she asked him, "How soon will that be, _mein lieber Wink?"_

The silver warrior locked his one good eye with the Rhine daughter's sparkling golden ones, and resolutely he told her, "Upon the _soonest_ opportunity that I am afforded, my dear Lorelei." A warm smile was shared between them, and she gave his hand a small squeeze before her fingers slid from his grasp as he turned to go, grunting a 'farewell' to her.

He had just stepped out of the nook proper and was about to come to the end of the very short, nondescript annex that opened from it to the Market's upper-level, when he heard her call behind him, _"Wink, warte!"_ And he turned around to see her running the few strides that were between them, and with a small leap from her toes, she jumped up and planted a kiss right on his face... Or rather, on his broken tusk, since even though Lorelei was as tall as a fathom, Wink was still at least a good two feet taller than she, which made it a long reach. But what did that matter? She kissed him! Wink was stunned, Lorelei had _never_ kissed him before at all, not even when she was a very small child and would come running up to him or Nuada with her bubbling, childish gestures of endearment! The great hulk of a troll just stood there, dumbstruck, unable to take his eye off of the Germanic siren with her brilliant smile and eyes that shone like summer sunfire on purest gold, the dreamy lights of Little Budapest reflecting sharply off her pointed ivory teeth.

Her smile went just a little wider as she broke him out of his stupor, urging him, "Go!" Wink half-grunted, half-rumbled something to the effect of "oh, right" and turned to go back the way they had come - and from there to the destination where he had promised to rejoin his prince - his great troll heart beating so hard and so fast that he thought it would thunder right out of his chest the whole way there.

* * *

><p><em>Nuada left the little shop and stepped back out into the hustle of the Troll Market at night, where Wink waited for him. The troll looked more than a little out of sorts. There was a faint smudge of wine-red color, stark cerise against the bone-whiteness of his broken tusk. Tensing his jaw and trying to ignore the twinge of embarrassment, Nuada surreptitiously indicated the spot and Wink hastily wiped the cosmetic residue away. When the troll opened his mouth, as if to explain, Nuada held up a staying hand.<em>

_"I do _**not**_ want to know." Forcing the discomfiting image of lush lips brushing against troll tusks from his mind, the prince added, _**"Ever."**

_Wink mumbled an acknowledgment that this was probably best, and the pair melted into the crowd of the Market._

* * *

><p>AN - As you can see here, Wink and Lorelei have progressed past the stage of "blooming feelings" that was seen in _All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking_ and are now feeling a more _active_ kind of chemistry around each other.

- I based "Little Budapest" off the fact that _Hellboy II_ was filmed in Budapest, Hungary, AND there really is a replica of a balcony over a bookstore in Budapest that Guillermo del Toro included into the Troll Market scene because he saw it in the city and liked it so much. I learned about it in the extra features on the DVD.

- The song that Lorelei sings in the nook over Little Budapest is "Szeretem" by NOX, a Hungarian music group, off of their album _Örömvölgy._ If you can't buy it online or find it on iTunes, you _can_ still see/hear it on YouTube.

* * *

><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Hier = Here

Willkommen in meiner Winkel = Welcome to my corner/nook

mein lieber Wink = my dear Wink

Vielen Dank = Many thanks (or) Thank you very much

Also... sag mir... = So... tell me...

Wirklich? = Really?

Warum? = Why?

Ich verstehe = I understand/I see/I get it

Ich kenne dieses Lied! = I know this song!

Wink, warte! = Wink, wait!


	4. Coruscation Part 2

**A/N** - A couple of things in these flashes might be quoted out of "Once Upon A Time," if you spot them, you get a muffin.

REMEMBER: Not all of these flashes may end up being part of the canon/fanon continuity, so keep an open mind, _**they're just ideas answering prompts.**_ LA Knight can pick and choose whatever elements she likes.

German translations at the bottom in the end-notes.

_Update Mar 11: All flashes except **Potatoes** in this chapter of the Coruscation series are canon. **Technology** is still pending._

* * *

><p><strong>BLOOD<strong>

_(Sometime before _Ch. 37 & 38: When You're Gone [parts 1 & 2]_ of "Once Upon A Time") _

Geri liked the smells that hung around Lorelei, the most prominent of which was the scent of water. The fresh, clean scent that hung over a deep river. But if he got closer to her, like sometimes when they were dancing, or just off by themselves talking, then another mix of fragrances would register on his senses, and they all seemed to come from that stuff that she had dabbed on her ruddy lips, making them an even richer red than they already were.

The top-note was wine and roses. Classic. Romantic. The essence of seduction. Very Lorelei.

Underneath that was the smell of warm honey. Rich, sweet, and golden. Like her.

But hiding underneath the romance and the warmth, at the base of the bouquet staining her lips, was a scent that set off flashing red lights in his brain whenever he got a sniff of it.

Blood.

The first time that he'd caught the scent of it _on her mouth_ it had made his claws and fangs protrude, and she'd asked if there was something on his mind. He'd feigned a casual interest in the fact that they apparently made lipstick that smelled like wine and roses these days.

"They don't," she'd responded. "The lip-rouge that I wear is natural and of my _own_ invention. I make it myself."

Well... _That_ was unexpected, thought Geri.

Lorelei's golden eyes had twinkled, and a _very_ sexy smile bloomed on her blood-colored mouth. "I know what it is that you smell, Geri. Don't think that I don't sense the predator standing with me now," she'd said.

Damn. A wolf and a _fox._ What a hell of a pair they would make.

* * *

><p><strong>HANDS (2)<strong>

"Hold onto me," Wink growled.

Lorelei complied, wrapping her slender arms around his thick neck as best as she could, clinging tightly as he held her flush against his body with his left arm. Then the enormous troll raised his right arm, and launched his mechanical hand far out into the air. Once it grasped the purchase that he was aiming for, both troll and rhinemaiden held to each other a little tighter, bracing themselves for what they were about to do.

With three of Wink's great strides, they were suddenly flying into space, swinging by the chain to which his metal hand was attached - the air _whooshing_ past them ruffling the hairs on Wink's battle-scarred face, and making Lorelei's long tresses flutter behind her like black satin ribbons.

_(The above can be imagined in either a "Wink's being dashing & cavalier" context, or a "we gotta run for our lives now" context, either works.)_

* * *

><p><strong>BONDS<strong>

The young Rhine daughter gazed with a peculiar fascination on the shining symbol that adorned Mr. Wink's large leather belt. She had seen it before, of course, both Prince Nuada of the elves and his right-hand man (troll) wore it, but no one had yet elaborated to her as to _why,_ or what it was, exactly.

Lorelei began tracing over the elegantly wrought lines hammered into the metal with a curious fingertip. Wink was quick to notice. "Admiring the pretty design, eh?" he prompted. The girl nodded.

"Both you and His Highness wear it," she observed aloud. "What is it?"

Wink bent down so that he could look the young girl in the eye better, as he explained, "Every kingdom through all the ages has its own signs and symbols, things to designate itself by. A signature. And _this,"_ he indicated the prominent adornment on his wide belt, "is the royal seal of the elf kingdom of Bethmoora, which Nuada is crown prince of - even in exile - which is why he wears it."

"But _you're_ not an elf," Lorelei observed aloud again. "Why do you wear it?"

Wink smiled at her question. "No, an elf I am not, but I _am_ in service to one, and so I wear his symbol as a sign of that."

Lorelei eyed the gleaming crest at the troll warrior's waist, and appreciatively started tracing over it again. Wink could see in the young Rhine daughter's eyes the inherent love that her race had for gold and beautiful things starting to turn the wheels in her mind, and he was quick to deduce what she might be thinking. He lifted her chin to have her eyes meet his. "I can see that you greatly appreciate the artistry of Bethmoora's seal, but do not think that you can simply don this like any other piece of jewelry, lass," he told her. "This is a symbol of high importance - it _means_ something. It is a sign of loyalty and honor, and the bonds that we make with them. Do not forget that."

* * *

><p><strong>TECHNOLOGY<strong>

_(Sometime after the events of __**Telephone**__, in _Coruscation Pt. 1)

_1:04 AM EST _

From: dmyers ***** . net

To: drachegold ***** . com

**dmyers:** Lorelei, you there?

_**drachegold:**_ Ja, but don't think that just because I HAVE electronic mail that I make a regular habit of USING it. :P Haha. :)

_**drachegold:**_ What's up? Are you and his highness well?

**dmyers:** Yes, we're fine, I just...

**dmyers:** Arg, I'm essentially DATING an impossibly beautiful dream when it comes to him, but everything that surrounds us is still so messed up!

**dmyers:** Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning. Like I'm in over my head and I can't breathe.

**dmyers:** I guess I just wanted to reach out and talk to someone who would understand it all better than anyone else might, since you're seeing Wink and all that.

_**drachegold:**_ Dylan Myers, bear in mind that I am a daughter of the Rhine - I KNOW a thing or two about drowning.

_**drachegold:**_ And the way *I* see it, you are a HARD woman to kill, body and soul. Remember that.

**dmyers:** Thanks :)

_**drachegold:**_ Bitte sehr :)

_**drachegold:**_ Speaking of my lover, he is awake and I must leave you now. ;)

**dmyers:** Bye, have fun.

_**drachegold:**_ I can assure you, I will. ;)

_drachegold has logged off._

Dylan had to smile as she powered her smartphone off. She really was happy for Wink and Lorelei. She liked the big hulking troll quite a bit, and the rhinemaiden always treated her decently - never threw Dylan's humanity in her face like there was something wrong with it or anything, but treated her on the merits of Dylan being _Dylan,_ not Dylan being human - a gracious woman of any sort that Dylan had met.

The pair deserved to be happy together, even if they were a bit of an odd-looking couple, though it was likely that they were neither the first nor the oddest twosome that history had ever seen. Yet, not for the first time, Dylan felt a little envious of Lorelei.

It wasn't the most "saintly" thing to feel envious about, but Dylan couldn't just deny what she _felt_ physically as well as in her heart for Nuada, she loved him and wanted him with _everything_ that comprised her being. But she had a covenant with her Heavenly Father to keep, and she was a woman of her honor - she _would_ keep it.

Lorelei had no such covenant. Dylan knew from study that it was the nature of Rhine maids to seduce and have their way with passing mortals, if they didn't just lure them to outright kill them for sport. As for love, Dylan had never heard of any siren - Germanic or otherwise - that had customs of marriage in their heritage. In whatever stories she _had_ seen of a rhinemaiden in love, they simply took a lover and were happy with them, come what may. _If_ they ever married, it was in the custom of their _husband's_ clan, or tribe or kingdom or people or whatever, not their own.

So, all in all, there was _nothing_ to stand between Wink and Lorelei acting on their feelings at all... and here was Dylan, feeling so close yet still so far from her prince.

Oh yes, she envied Lorelei, but all the same, she was happy for the river siren, and so help her, she would hold onto that happiness with everything she had.

* * *

><p><strong>POTATOES <strong>

Dylan honestly did not know what to make of the scene in front of her eyes. Nuada was off to the side, polishing a few weapons, a soft smile playing about the edges of his dark mouth, while Lorelei was _going off_ in rapid-fire German, pacing about the room, and appeared to be ranting quite animatedly as Wink kept growling, grunting, and rumbling to her, apparently trying to get through to the agitated Rhine daughter _rationally_ and not having much success. As the seconds ticked on, the _growls_ became more and more prevalent, until finally as she made another stormy pass by him in her pacing he outright _roared_ at her. Lorelei shut up, whirled around, and blinked a few times, as if she were just now seeing the troll that towered over everyone in the room. Wink lifted his flesh-and-blood hand to cup the side of Lorelei's face, and slowly, gently, stroked his thumb over her smooth, fair cheek, rumbling softly to her.

Like magic, Lorelei calmed down. She leaned into the touch of the veteran warrior's hand and closed her flashing, ultra-gold eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Wink gave a soft grunt to get her attention, and she opened her eyes briefly before he pulled her into a close hug, which she returned in equal measure. After a few moments of holding her like this, he used his mechanical hand to lift her chin so that she would look him in the eye. He rumbled something to her, it seemed like he was asking her a question. Lorelei nodded solemnly, and with a firm grunt, Wink released the river siren and turned to depart the room. Lorelei brought both her hands up to her ruby lips to blow a kiss after him with a grateful smile - a smile which the troll returned - and then turned to make her own exit out another side of the room, bidding the smiling elfin prince a mutual _"Gute Nacht"_ on her way out.

Dylan came over to Nuada's side and took a seat. "What was _that_ all about?" she asked, thoroughly in the dark. "Were they fighting just now?"

Nuada gave a short frown as he answered, "Oh no, no, no, not at all." He gave a few short waves of his hand as if to dismiss the very idea of such a thing. "Lorelei was just upset about a dealer, an insectoid of some sort, that managed to cheat her in a recent transaction regarding some crates of potatoes that she needed to re-stock Fafner's Cave. What Wink just did now was volunteer to pay him a visit... To help set his crooked ledger straight, as it were," Nuada said with a dark smirk and a mischievous mirth in his eyes.

Dylan stared in the direction that Wink had gone, and found herself saying, "May Heaven have mercy on the insectoid, because I somehow doubt that _he_ will."

Nuada laughed. "How true that is, _mo duinne__,_ how very true, indeed."

* * *

><p><strong>DANCE <strong>

Wink and Nuada just stared. Motionless. Speechless. _Helpless,_ even.

Lorelei and Dylan were _dancing._

The rhinemaiden was the one playing the part of _la chanteuse_ in this scene before them, utterly swept up and _exultant_ in the song that poured forth from her garnet lips... and consequently making Dylan a little more uninhibited than usual because of it. Mortal and faery both swayed to the count of the song, hypnotizing in the smooth flow of their motions, like serpents balancing on their tails or flows of water given female shape.

Nuada looked at Wink, eyes light as palest gold-kissed ivory, while Wink's every bristle stood _visibly_ on end. The troll looked at the elf, and the prince blew out a long puff of air through his dark lips in a silent whistle. The troll gave a short, quiet grunt in whole-hearted agreement, and both warriors returned their eyes back to the two ladies that remained unknowing of their silently suffering audience.

* * *

><p><strong>THREAT<strong>

Most clubs and bars in New York City had bouncers, hired big guys to throw out the rowdy and keep the peace. Others didn't. They didn't need them.

Plenty of the regular patrons that frequented Fafner's Cave were creatures of a _very_ physically impressive sort - ogres, trolls, and others that were equally intimidating. They loved the food and drink, they enjoyed the atmosphere, and every last one of them thought well of their charming hostess, it was only natural that they all took it upon themselves to make it their business that no trouble was tolerated.

But sometimes, just sometimes, even the "unofficial bouncers" had to be put back in line.

"Oy! Lei-lei!" One not-so-sober old bridge troll called from one of the tables to Lorelei. "Give us a song, will ye!" A few of his pals sitting at the table with him chimed in in agreement.

The river maiden smiled coyly as she personally brought the table full of various assorted trolls their round of drinks. _"Tut mir leid, Jungs,"_ she said. "No songs." As she came around to the old bridge troll she added, "And Blick," the particular troll in question looked up at his hostess' face, and as he did she took his drink and tossed its soaking contents right into his wrinkled, slate-gray face. "If you ever call me _that,_ or any other ridiculous pet-name ever again, _I'll_ be tossing _you_ out."

The rest of the present company roared in hearty laughter as Lorelei smirked and plunked down the empty mug in front of Blick, who looked very unhappy and sulky as he croaked, "I _paid_ for that drink!"

_"Na ja,"_ she replied nonchalantly, her voice like a careless March wind, "looks like you'll have to buy another." Her smirk turned into a grin as she sauntered back to the bar, aurulent eyes dancing with mirth, the laughing and hooting behind her only increasing at the expense of poor Blick.

* * *

><p><strong>MIDNIGHT<strong>

_(During the events mentioned/alluded to in __**Telephone**__, in _Coruscation Pt. 1_, which is ch. 2 of this fic. CANON: co-running with chapter 53 of "Once Upon A Time.")_

_"Ach!"_ Lorelei cried out, as she was sent sprawling to the ground, partly in pain, partly in rage. Dragon's fury burned from her smoldering eyes as she carefully lifted her head to glare at the Butcher guard that stood over her, as dark and menacing as Death itself.

_Come closer,_ she silently willed it,_ just a little more._ Once the Butcher was just close enough, ready to swing its blade down on her, she struck out hard with her foot, connecting right at its ankle joint. The Butcher's balance was thrown off, and the rhinemaid hooked behind its knee with her still outstretched leg to bring it down even further. Her hands shot out to grip at the Butcher's sword-wielding hands, keeping the blade from savaging her, and digging her ever-sharp nails into its flesh, slicking its grip with its own black blood. The Butcher jerked back with its upper body, and Lorelei used the momentum to assist lifting herself up. Her hands not leaving the clawing grip that she had on the Butcher's hands, she struck down with the edge of her bent arm at its elbow joint, and the strike was enough to further loose the Butcher's hold on its sword enough for Lorelei to wrest it from its grasp, and pulling the sword straight back in a long, deep slice at the juncture where neck met shoulder, she incapacitated the Butcher long enough to send a finishing _jab_ right through its heart from behind with the sword that she now held.

About thirty paces away from the Rhine daughter, more Butcher guards lay dead with broken necks and mangled torsos at the feet of a slumped over, gasping Wink, the slick blood of their fresh corpses shining in the dim, ambient light of the atmosphere over the city. There had been many. Too many. The troll had bashed and jabbed, punched and rent, and strangled his way through foe after foe. Sheer numbers had allowed them to cut and stab at his arms, his legs, some had even managed to cut through his armor! This wasn't like war. In war, there were many opponents, battling each other. In this fight, _all_ had been focusing on him alone, but for the couple that had given their vicious attention to Lorelei. _Oh gods, Lorelei!_

_"Lorelei!"_ Wink roared.

_"Ich bin hier!"_ she answered back, running to him, slipping a little in the shadowed pools of dark blood as she approached him. _"Mein Gott,"_ she breathed, "Wink, you're bleeding all over... _Oh, nein!"_ She gasped as she saw more closely the damage done to him, the bleeding gashes in his armor, the deep slashes on his limbs and a split in the left side of his upper lip, places where he'd doubtless bear a few new scars... if he survived. His breathing was labored, and his flesh hand clutched at one of the gashes in his torso.

His mind wasn't on himself though, he got one look at Lorelei's disheveled long hair, worse-for-wear dress, and black-blood-streaked form, and the first words wheezed out of his mouth were, "Are you injured? Are you alright?"

She answered, both honestly and rapidly, "Mostly bruises and scrapes. A few cuts. Nothing broken. _Gott,_ we have get you away from here, someplace safe." Lorelei's head whipped up as she heard footsteps approaching from a distance away.

More Butchers. They were searching for the bloodied pair.

Lorelei snarled softly and grimaced, cursing under her breath through her gritted teeth, _"Ach! Fick. Mich."_

"With pleasure," Wink _actually_ had the energy to quip with a weak smile. "... If we survive this night," he rumbled softly, his aspect once more becoming grim whilst he cast his eye on the not-long-in-approaching Butchers.

"It's a deal," Lorelei said with an equally solemn expression, putting gentle hands on her hulking companion and starting to lead him, limping, with her to whatever safe route _away_ she could get them to. "Provided that you hold up your end of it," she added gravely, as he winced from the pain.

* * *

><p><strong>AN** - I originally told LA Knight that I didn't plan to elaborate on the events of **Telephone**, from _Coruscation Part 1,_ but then... I **really** wanted to illustrate Lorelei's fighting style, as you see here in **Midnight**. She doesn't use strength or agility, like Wink and Nuada, but instead, she uses her enemies' own movements against them, striking at pressure points and balance points to bring them down and then _stabby-slice,_ if she's using blades. It's not the most macho or "Xena" way of doing it, sure, but it _is_ effective. Depending on her foe, this isn't always going to work, naturally, but "adapt to the situation" is key anyways.

- Blick is an "extra," only serving that one flash-prompt, **Threat**, don't expect to see him again.

* * *

><p><strong><em>TRANSLATIONS<em>**

Bitte sehr = you're welcome

Gute Nacht = Goodnight

Tut mir leid, Jungs = So sorry, boys

Ich bin hier = I'm here

Mein Gott = my god

Fick mich = (C'mon, really, if you don't get the gist of _this_ one, then you deserve no muffins.) :P


	5. Coruscation Part 3

**The Usual Author's Note** - A couple of things in these flashes might be quoted out of _"Once Upon A Time."_ Not all of these flashes may end up being part of the canon/fanon continuity, so keep an open mind, _**they're just ideas answering prompts.**_ LA Knight can pick and choose whatever elements she likes. German translations at the bottom in the end-notes.

_Update Mar 11: All flashes here except for **Cruelty** = canon. **Cruelty**'s non-canon status may change, though, since LA Knight really liked it.  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>DONUT <strong>

_(Before Special Agent John Myers gets transferred to Antarctica prior to the events of the second Hellboy movie) _

"Thanks for the ride," said the tall, exotic beauty with the fairest complexion and most _luscious_-looking long dark hair that John Myers had ever seen, as she unclasped her hands from around his waist and dismounted from her seat behind him on his blue motorcycle.

"No problem," he said, as he watched her walk into the alley. She stopped about half-way to the other end of the building and turned around. The smile on her deep red mouth made his insides feel light. From over the side of the roof of the building, something that looked like a _huge_ mechanical metal fist on the end of an industrial-strength chain lowered down to about waist-level near the woman and spread its wide metal fingers. She looked upwards, and her smile was all aglow as she grabbed hold of the chain, and allowed the mechanical hand to gently wrap its metal grip about her slender waist as much as it could. The hand-on-a-chain pulled her up to the top of the roof, carefully, and right into the arms of a hulking silver-gray behemoth that _John_ thought looked quite scary but apparently _she_ did not, as she was hugging the creature happily and raining kisses all over its tusked face.

John Myers sighed somewhat ruefully - now as then - as he sat on the couch with some of his best pals, all sharing some boxes of donuts and watching a movie. Liz had turned her face to softly run her lips along Red's jaw-line, and the big red demon turned his face to kiss her full on the mouth, properly. It wasn't that John was not happy for his friends, he just wondered if there would _ever_ be a time in his life that he would meet a beautiful woman with sleek dark hair that he could actually _talk to_ that _wasn't_ already taken by some freaky guy out of a story book that could tear him into little pieces without even breaking a sweat.

John took another bite of his donut, recalling something his Uncle Thaddeus had said, once upon a time. "Once is a mistake, or an accident. Twice is an emerging pattern." John didn't think that he liked the looks of this pattern.

* * *

><p><strong>HEAVEN<strong> **  
><strong>

He had a prince to serve. She had a bar to run. But there were some nights that they had together.

In those nights, Lorelei would _revel_ in his warmth, his strength, as he held her close. He would run his fingers through her hair, and she would _melt_ under his affectionate attentions. His deep-chested rumbling vibrated all through her, and made her heart dance away from her. His touch was gentle, skillful, perfect; he was _never_ clumsy or careless with her. She always found herself instinctively leaning in, seeking more of that feeling, of his rough leathery skin moving against hers - whether his touch was solid, or soft and light.

Lorelei would fall asleep to the sound and feel of his great heart beating beside her, strong and steady, while the warm smell of old leather, deep places under the earth, and troll male all wove around her and carried her into dreams.

The nights that she stayed with him, or that he stayed with her - those nights that they were together - _those_ nights were heavenly.

* * *

><p><strong>HELL<strong>

He had a prince to serve. She had a bar to run. So, naturally, there were some nights that they had to spend apart.

In those nights, Wink would stir in his sleep and reach for her, but only cool, empty space would fill his grasp. He would imagine her voice near him, her breathing, but only the silence of the room and the distant sounds of the city would press on his ears. It was almost painful to recall her soft velvet touch, her warmth, the silky feel of her hair, while nothing but the strength of the recalled memory whispered over him like a ghost in a mirror, taunting him, making his senses ache for something beyond his reach in those hours.

Wink would fall asleep into dreams of eyes like dragon's treasure, a fox's smile on blood-red lips, and the sound and smell of deep water washing over him and carrying him away.

The nights that they were apart... _those_ were the nights that were the hardest to get any rest.

* * *

><p><strong>POISON <strong>

1940s

Prince Nuada burst through the door of the New York home, his man-at-arms, Wink, following close behind him. The first person to approach him upon his entrance was a very beautiful, young-looking woman with softly waved, golden-brown hair and ultra-gold eyes. "Where is she, Sunna?" Nuada asked her, concern evident in his voice and his dark-rimmed eyes of amber-gold, as he abandoned his typical manner of formality with this woman and addressed her by her first name.

Sunna indicated a hall off to her right and answered, "My daughter and your sister are both in the parlor-room, _Eure Hoheit._ Wink, if you will come with me to the kitchen?" Nuada followed the path down the hall that Sunna had indicated, while troll and Rhine daughter hied themselves to the kitchen.

In the parlor-room, lain on a lounge, was another young-looking woman who _appeared_ to be about Sunna's age, but a bit taller, and with sleek, black hair. Lorelei. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was erratic, she sweated and shivered, and every now and again a delirious whimper of pain would escape her. Princess Nuala sat beside her, stroking her hair back from her face, worry and care written all over her fine elvish features. The princess looked up at her twin's approach. "It is good that you came," she told him softly.

Nuada took up a seat opposite her, his eyes on the suffering rhinemaiden. "I came as soon as I knew," he said. "Tell me _exactly_ what happened."

Nuala took a deep breath, "We did not expect that the day would turn out so hot when she took me to see a glade in the park. She began to get dizzy from the dry heat taxing her need for water, and so we looked for someplace that she could get a drink." Nuala closed her eyes, her twinge of regret stinging in Nuada's own heart as well. "The nearest thing was a human-constructed drinking-fountain... We had no idea that it would be along another one of those water-lines that the human government has recently ordered to be 'treated' with chemical additives."

When Nuala opened her eyes again, they were wet and bright, and Nuada sat with a grim, stony expression, his gloved fists clenched tightly in silently burning rage. Another transgression, another atrocity to make him hate humanity all the more. The humans somehow lived, even as they _poisoned_ their own water, while his people, his _friends,_ suffered for it. "We will make it right, Nuala," he said, reaching for his sister's hand. "One way or another, we _will_ set this right."

"'Right' in the sense that our friend will recover and live, brother?" Nuala questioned. "Or by 'right' do you mean that you will seek to set your wrath on _more_ than only those who are accountable, for standing in such positions of power to have brought this about, by making them and all who are ruled by them suffer in her stead?"

The prince did not answer his twin, but carefully stroked his outstretched gloved hand over the side of the ashen-white face of a shuddering Lorelei, anticipating when Wink would come from the kitchen with one of his troll brews for her.

* * *

><p><strong>STAR <strong>

_(Near the Upstate house where Sunna currently lives, mentioned/alluded to in Chapter 1 of this fic.)_

Wink and Lorelei sat gazing up at the starry expanse over their heads. The river siren was sitting in the troll's lap, with his huge, strong arms wrapped around her, for closeness as much as for warmth.

"Follow the path that I trace," said Lorelei, her breath and her voice as soft as the night that caught them, and she lifted her long, elegant arm, and with one finger, traced something in the stars for her burly companion to decipher. Wink smiled as he discerned what it was. She had written in runic script, words which translated as "my hero."

"Now my turn," he rumbled low in her ear, his warm breath curling around the delicate point and making her bite her lip, briefly. Now the silver warrior lifted _his_ great arm and traced something in the stars for his comparatively diminutive sweetheart to see. Lorelei's mouth came open, just slightly, as she saw what he wrote.

With invisible lines of pure thought he had carved into the heavens, in troll script, words which meant "my valkyrie."

Valkyrie. A valkyrie was one of the maidens in service to the gods, who chose and subsequently took worthy heroes that fell in battle to live on in Valhalla. Christian conquerors of the Germanic and Norse lands had equated them to angels of the battlefield, who carried the souls of the valorous to Heaven once they were slain.

But that which Wink had intended in those words was the _only_ meaning that mattered to Lorelei, here and now, in his arms under the stars. To her, he was a hero. To him, she was the celestial creature that bore him body and soul to paradise.

The rhinemaiden lifted her moon-pale face, and pressed her dark rosepetal lips to the line of Wink's jaw, just behind one of his tusks, under the chin, sending a shimmering bolt of warmth all the way down to the base of his spine. _"Ich liebe dich, mein Held,"_ she whispered, soft against his skin. _I love you, my hero._

* * *

><p><strong>CRUELTY<strong>

_(Not intended as canon, I just couldn't get this idea out of my head. Ultimately it's still LA Knight's decision, though.) _

"So... _This_ is the creature that the prince's _'valet'_ is so besotted with, then, hmm?" Dierdre said with no small amount of contempt in her tone, as she sharply held Lorelei's chin and turned her head this way and that, as if inspecting the Rhine daughter. Lorelei's golden eyes smoldered with loathing like seething dragon's fire at the gancanaugh that had her here with chains wrapped about her legs and her hands bound over her head with leather ties, enchanted silken gag over her mouth.

"Hm," the vile thing scoffed, before she began to laugh, with a smile that spoke of a cruel heart and eyes full of malice. "And you _actually_ bed the brute! Ha! I would wonder for your sanity, child, but I am curious..." she brought her face closer to the rhinemaiden, who flinched away from her in disgust. "You already have the favor of the Silver Lance, and his _precious_ twin, so what is it that you gain from rutting so _eagerly_ with that _thing?"_

For a moment something changed in Lorelei's eyes, and her look seemed far away, towards another place and time, towards other company. There was joy, sadness, and... what? Diedre ripped the gag off of Lorelei's face and gripped her chin harder, forcing her to look the gancanaugh in the eyes. "Tell me," she snapped sharply, "and do not presume that your siren voice will better your chances here."

The burning loathing had returned to the river maid's eyes, and she said coolly, "It's something called 'love'..." Dragon's gold blazed against icy crimson-slitted black as stare met stare evenly. "And it's a thing that you would not recognize if it looked you right in the face and _shot_ you."

Shock registered for all of two seconds on Dierdre's face, before she backhand-slapped the rhinemaiden with a snarl, only to feel the hard sting of it echo through every piece of her _own_ body with the magic in the cry that tore from Lorelei's lips.

* * *

><p><strong>CHESS<strong>

_(In one of Wink & Nuada's various lairs throughout the city) _

"Checkmate," grunted Wink. "Out of curiosity, can you recall any instance where we have ever played this game and you've won?" The troll looked at his chess partner with a bright twinkle in his one eye and a smile on his mouth. "Because I know _I_ cannot." Wink and Lorelei both chortled good-naturedly, their contrasting voices filling the room where they sat across from each other, her golden king surrounded on all fronts by his silver knights and rooks.

_"Nein,"_ she said, shaking her head. _"Niemals."_ Her eyes gleamed as she folded her arms to rest on the table and laid her head upon them, looking at him. "You are a veteran warrior of many years, so you are not at all out of your element with this game; and truthfully, I _hate_ the rigidity of what chess demands in play," she confessed with no hesitation and no shame. Lorelei lifted her head up, but kept her arms resting on the table. "But I enjoy the company that makes it a worthwhile pastime." Her smile was every bit as warm as the firelight that played like living gold over her fair features, setting the illusory effect of sparkling miniature stars along the chains of her jewelry that hung delicately at her ears and her throat. Lorelei took a breath, and spoke in a light tone of voice, _"Na gut,_ as we agreed, victory entitles the winner to a forfeit, so..." She spoke plainly, neither attempting to hide nor to reveal anything that could have been in her mind right at the moment, _"Was willst du von mir?"_

The troll did not even have to think before he gave his answer. "Stay," was all that he said.

"Stay?" Lorelei echoed, unsure of what he was asking.

Wink got up from where he sat, and stood beside the rhinemaiden, his shadow against the firelight towering above her like he was all the power of a mountain given living form. He held out his hand for her, and as softly and lightly as a cat's paw, she placed her fair hand in his, his fingers curling around it as she rose from her seat. "Stay here tonight," he rumbled, his deep voice was low. He gently pulled her closer, his mechanical right hand at the small of her back, his left hand bringing hers to rest on his muscled chest, smoothing her palm over his beating heart. His one eye locked with hers. Lorelei's whole hand vibrated with his heartbeat and his deep voice, and her pulse quickened a little, though her outward composure remained intact, as he rumbled, "Stay with me."

Lorelei forgot that she was barely breathing.

When words decided not to fail her, she said softly, quietly, "What about the prince?"

Wink snorted and rolled his eye. "It is unlikely that _tonight_ will be among the nights that His Highness will repair here, but _if_ he does..." Wink gave a light shrug, mirth in his eye and a smirk on his face, "Who knows? The boy might learn something."

Lorelei laughed at that, and with a smile Wink picked her up effortlessly and twirled her around the way that princes and princesses or knights and ladies do in mortal fairy-stories. _"And,"_ he growled, "the bieresal have proven full-well in the past to be very capable of seeing to Fafner's Cave during a brief absence from you, so let _them_ see to it tonight." He set her down so that she stood atop the place that she had occupied whilst they played their game of chess, _almost_ eye-level with him, maybe yet two inches below. He let his eye brush over her features like a caress - the arch of her brow, the graceful line of her neck, _nothing_ was left untouched by his gaze.

Still holding her steady about the waist in his arms, he brought his mouth to the crook of that swan-like neck, and was gratified to hear her breath catch. As he trailed his mouth over her skin slowly upwards, breathing her in hungrily like he would never breathe anything else, his deep, rumbling voice filled her whole world and sent waves of vibrations down to the end of her spine as he made his request once again, in low tones, "Stay with me tonight."

Lorelei could barely consciously remember how to stand. Words almost failed to find her once again, but it almost seemed as if they moved her mouth for her, in the end. _"Wie du willst,"_ she answered breathlessly yet smoothly, dissolving into the troll warrior's embrace. "I will stay with you tonight."

Somewhere in the cosmos, she could have sworn that on some plane of existence someone must have been whispering, _Silver knight takes golden queen... checkmate, I win again._

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><p><strong>AN** - In the first _Hellboy_ movie, John Myers actually _does_ have a blue motorcycle or mo-ped (kinda hard to tell, for whatever reason), which is how he gets to the BPRD building on his first day and how he takes Liz out to the park for coffee (I think she even snaps a picture of it). I went with motorcycle here. John's gotta have _something_ that makes him cool, aside from being the adorable pure-at-heart guy that somehow brings out the better stuff in people even as he inadvertently discovers more in himself as well.

- Sunna is Lorelei's mom. Her name is the same as the Old High German name for the goddess of the sun - similar to the word "Sonne," which means "sun" in contemporary German. Her proper full name would be "Sunna von der Strom," which is literally "Sunna from/of the river." She'll be popping up every now and again, IF her presence is relevant enough for whatever scene is written, otherwise, don't hold your breath.

- "Treating" municipal water really did begin in the 1940s in America, though not all at once, there was a lot of political process involved, and I can speak from personal experience the havoc that these additives sometimes wreak on people who are more or less sensitive to them. :( Thank heavens for springs and wells.

- It's been mentioned before that Lorelei is a friend of _both_ of the royal elf twins, but never touched on with Nuala in the picture, which is something that I wanted to rectify with **Poison**. Obviously, the Nuada&Wink/Lorelei bond is longer-lived and stronger than the Nuala/Lorelei friendship, since the _guys_ were the first to meet her and they see more of her since _they're_ the ones out in the world more, but Lorelei is still dear to Nuala - psychic she-elf & empathic rhinemaiden, both have a deep respect for life in all its "freaky-funky" to "fuzzy-fluffy" forms, yep, they get along great. In the interests of a mutual friend, I think that Nuala would be glad of Nuada being there for Lorelei, no matter what she thinks of him.

- There really _is_ a Troll Alphabet that was developed for the _Hellboy II_ movie (another thing I learned in the DVD special features). You see it used in several places throughout the Troll Market, and it's carved _all over_ parts of the Golden Army's chamber. The director, Guillermo del Toro, swears that he personally checked to make sure that nobody did anything lame with it, like carving dirty jokes into the set, gotta love him for that. :)

- "You wouldn't know what love is if it looked you right in the face and _shot_ you" is something that I _seriously_ felt the impulse to say to somebody once, but I held my tongue. Every now and again, people or characters that I see remind me of it. Lorelei gets her chance to say it here in **Cruelty**.

- The theme song for **Chess** is "Dream Here," by Oomph! featuring Marta Jandová, and its German-language equivalent, "Träumst Du?" also by Oomph!, obviously. Same song, sung in different languages, basically, and both versions are a _very_ good fit. Some folks *cough*like Americans*cough, cough* might not understand the part in the German version that sings "springst du mit mir" because the verb "springen" means "to jump." Well, in that context it's actually a euphemism for making love. _So,_ make sense now?... Yeah, close your mouth and put your eyes back in your head.

**Dearest LA Knight:** Sorry, love, no Geri flashes this time around, but if I ever get "Silver and Gold" finished it might make up for it.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS <strong>

Eure Hoheit = Your Highness

Nein = No

Niemals = Never

Was willst du von mir? = In the context of **Chess**: "What would you have of me?" Literally: "What do you want of me?"

Wie du willst = As you will/As you want/ *imitating Wesley from the Princess Bride* "As you wish"


	6. Silver And Gold Part 1: Taste of Blood

**SUMMARY:** Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in _Chapter 41: Silver and Gold_, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get _that_ there?

**PART 1:** What's going on with Lorelei and Fafner's Cave this morning before Wink gets there to see her. Fans of Geri will enjoy.

**WARNING**: Adult language ahead.

A/N - German translations at the bottom in the end-notes. A few things may be quoted from or alluding to _Chapter 37: When You're Gone (Part 1)_ of "Once Upon A Time," or other shorts in this fic.

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><p>"This looks pretty," Geri the fenris noted, as he reached up to finger at one of Lorelei's sparkling gold earrings that winked and flashed as it dangled in the soft tavern lights. One of his fingertips started to travel up the outer line of the shell of her pointed ear, softly, lightly.<p>

Lorelei's eyes got a little wider. "Be careful!" She started. One of her hands snapped up to stop his dead in its tracks. Surprise and concern took over the face of the blond fenris, and he immediately asked, "Did I hurt you? Did I pull on your earring by accident or something? I didn't mean to, if I did, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," she answered, carefully peeling his hand away from her ear, and then giving him a lopsided smile. "Just be careful." Geri nodded, though it did not escape his powers of perception that the pulse-spot at his companion's slender throat fluttered suspiciously fast for having _merely_ been given an uncomfortable pinch on the ear... supposedly. Both river-faery and lycanthrope turned their attention back to the cards in their hands. Every now and again, ultra-gold or shining copper eyes would flick to the other's face, each one trying to anticipate what the other one was plotting. Geri laid down a card, which Lorelei picked up. There was a gleam in her eye that spoke of inward gloating as she then laid down her hand with a smile. Geri's blond eyebrows went up, staring at the cards she'd spread before him.

"Well, fuck me dead," he said, hardly believing what he saw. "That's another hand I've lost to my amazing opponent." They both smiled as he reached for her cream-pale hand and gave her a congratulatory kiss on the back of her knuckles. Four queens and three kings lay proud and stately on the table in front of her, she'd definitely won this time. "However, while you may have won the _hand,_ darling, the real victory lies in the total score."

"So, tally it up, then," the rhinemaiden told him, her voice like warm silk, smile still glittering in her eyes and curving her wine-red lips. After tallying their cards for the hand, they added up their respective total scores with the other hands that they had played. Lorelei's total came to four-hundred and ninety points, Geri's was five-hundred. He had won.

_"Gratuliere!"_ Lorelei told him with a good-natured smile. The smugness in his gleaming feral eyes and fanged smile would have made Peter Pan look humble. "Your next seven drinks are on the house, as per the stakes that we agreed on," she said as she gathered up the cards to pack them back into the deck and return them to their rightful owner. As Geri pocketed the card deck, she asked him, "Would you care for one now?" When he nodded with a mumbled "yeah, sure" she snapped her fingers to beckon over a bieresal. "What would you like?"

The fenris looked at her with wolfish eyes, and said in a low voice that purred, "You know what I like."

The nuance was not at all lost on Lorelei, but she she gave it no acknowledgment other than a half-smile, fighting down a hint of color before it could reach her cheeks, and sent the bieresal off for Geri's drink. The almost-blush did not go unnoticed by the wolf-shifter, however. Few things, if any, ever escape the eyes of a predator. As the bieresal set down a large shot-glass full of dark red liquid in front of Geri he kept his eyes on her, and as he sipped he asked, the ever-present _growls_ in his voice sending small shivers down the faery woman's spine, "Why so shy today, darling?" Lorelei brought her eyes to meet his, swept them briefly over his wolfish smile and almost _leering_ copper eyes, and gave a very light shrug with one shoulder, by way of answer.

"How is your drink?" The rhinemaiden asked of her companion, voice like the ripples made by raindrops on a lake.

Geri took another sip of the blood in his glass, savoring the slick, slightly metallic taste of it. "Fine enough," he answered. "Though, I can't say that I haven't tasted sweeter," he said in a lower-toned voice, as he _ever-so-lightly_ traced small circular patterns over the soft, niveous skin of the back of Lorelei's hand and wrist with the very tips of his sharp claws.

A somewhat lopsided smile slowly pulled at the corners of the river maiden's deep red mouth, and her golden eyes took on a knowing sparkle. "Still thinking about that kiss you stole that other night, huh?" She inquired.

How could he forget?

They had gone out dancing at another place in the neighborhood, and at some point in the evening they went outside, just to have some air, talk a little. He hadn't been able to take his eyes off of that _temptingly_ rich red mouth of hers, nor could he get the scents of wine and lamb's blood that came from the stuff that she had dabbed on her lips out of his brain. Eventually he had watched those lips form the words, _"Komm, lass uns tanzen,"_ as she'd started to head back towards the crowd.

Mmmmm-no. Geri'd had other ideas.

The wolf-shifter had caught the hand of the gorgeous Rhine daughter, and gently pulled her back to him with a tug, saying, _"Nein,_ let's stay out here a while longer."

Her glittering golden eyes had matched his own glinting copper ones, as he pulled her closer and put his arms around her waist, and then he'd started to turn them both around and around together, bodies pressed close, in a careless little kind of dance that had made her smile and giggle, her pearly pointed white teeth shining against the red of her mouth. Then Geri had brought his face close to Lorelei's, and _ever_ so softly, slowly, brushed over her face and close to her mouth with the lightest touch of his lips, teasing her with that touch. Teasing himself, too, the whole idea was just too sexy - a siren in his arms with the scent of _blood_ on her mouth - it nearly drove him crazy every time that he breathed in. When he'd pulled back to look into her eyes again, there was barely a shred of anything resembling humanity left in his form at all, he was almost completely changed - claws, fangs, hair, re-molded features - he was nearly all monster. But the look on her face had been calm, collected, and her breathing was even, though he could tell with his every sense that her pulse had quickened. Not fear. Excitement. "Like what you see?" Geri had said, in a rough, gravelly approximation of his typical growl. Copper eyes flashing in triumph, he'd cupped the side of her flower-soft face with one of his clawed hands, and brought his mouth down on hers, slow and hungry, loving the taste of skin, wine, blood, and honey all together. It was amazing.

Still thinking about it? Hell, a better question would be, when would he ever _stop_ thinking about it?

He really _was_ leering at her now, as he sipped from his shot-glass, with the kind of smile that only a wolf _could_ smile on his face, and chuckling into his drink in a sort of voice that was low and dark and would have made Tim Curry proud. Lorelei rolled her auriferous eyes as she got up from the table where the two of them had been seated and started to walk over towards the bar. Coolly she tossed back to the lycanthrope over her shoulder, "Perhaps instead of _stealing_ a kiss you may want to be _worthy_ of one from a lady."

That wolfish smile on Geri's face pulled itself into a grin as he put down his glass and came close on her heels, saying, "Oh-ho! Darling, I _do,_ and I _would..."_ He caught the rhinemaiden about the waist from behind in a hold that was gentle, yet spoke of a restrained possessiveness. He put his fang-filled mouth to the spot where jaw met neck, just below her ear, a place where one could feel the pulse beat, and his surprisingly soft lips whisped over her skin as he finished, "If you would _let_ me."

Long, thick, black lashes closed over irises of brightest gold like the wings of night folding over twin suns. Lorelei breathed in deep and slow, to center herself. It was like gazing unblinking into the depths of a priceless black opal, just being around him - dark and dazzling. His charm, his feral magnetism - Geri never failed to be of some interest when he was around. And damn it, her senses _had_ enjoyed the experience of what he'd done when he kissed her.

But after that stolen kiss came the next morning. A morning that greeted her with waterlilies from Wink.

Seeing them had made her feel like she had been filled from head to toe with the sparkling essence of sunshine in Spring, it touched her heart so. How many times, how many hours, had she held those fragile water flowers in her hands, to her face, breathing in their fragrance and feeling their smooth softness? _Then_ when the troll had come to see her again after that... "heartfelt advances," he had said. Not just pretty talk. He truly meant to pursue whatever had started unfurling between them that night that they had spent over wine and conversation. It was only for the briefest micro-instant immediately after he'd said it - about a fifth of a second at most - but she had felt as though she was going to go somersaulting into the sky, and had to force herself to keep her heels firmly glued to the earth. Not only that, but the river siren couldn't even _count_ how many times those twenty minutes that she had spent alone together with Wink in the nook over Little Budapest at the Troll Market had replayed over, and over, and over again in her mind. _"Wow"_ was too oversimplified a word for it, for everything that she had felt between them that time.

But... Geri? _Let_ him?

"Well?" Geri softly growled over her skin, his husky voice was like a velvet coat placed on the shoulders of the god of savagery. _"Lor-e-lei...?"_ He caressed the sounds in the syllables of her name with his tongue even as he sank his teeth into them, and the Rhine daughter shivered. The wolf-shifter felt the pulse at his beautiful captive's throat start to beat faster, but just as before, there was no fear in her. He ever so slightly held her body even closer to his as he trailed the touch of his mouth slowly upwards, gently nipping at the edge of her ear.

Lorelei's eyes flew open.

_"Nicht!"_ Lorelei burst out, pushing the blond fenris sharply away.

Geri was thrown for a loop, and his coppery eyes were wide as he quickly put up his hands as if trying to surrender peacefully, saying, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

"You don't _learn,_ do you?" The river maiden snarled at him with a scowl on her pretty, lotus-white face.

"Lorelei, I'm _sorry!"_ Geri tried again. "I got carried away, I didn't-"

_"Schnautze,"_ she cut him off, coldly. "Have your drink," she spat, and started to stalk over to a back hall off one side of the bar.

_Dammit!_ Geri let out a huff of air and ran a hand through his blond hair, this was _not_ turning well. A few seconds passed before he took a deep breath and tried again. _"Please,"_ he said, with the closest-sounding thing to a pleading tone of voice as it ever got with him. Lorelei stopped. _Okay, so far so good._ She turned just slightly to look over her shoulder at him. "I'm sorry," he said again, quietly, and the raven-haired beauty turned to face him fully. "I'm just not very used to handling fragile things with care, if you couldn't tell," he explained with a wry smile, and the faery woman gave a very soft snort of a laugh and mirrored his wry expression with her own ruby red mouth. Actually, he was used to just taking whatever he felt like and tearing it apart, for all that it mattered to him, but for the first time in a long time, he actually _wanted_ something - something that he couldn't just take. He wanted this fairy-tale princess on his arm, to shower her with all the jewels of the world and to feed her the beating, bleeding hearts of anyone that ever stood against either of them, for any reason. Damn him, he _actually_ wanted her. Of all the things to happen to him, it _had_ to be this, didn't it? He held out his hand to her, palm up, beseeching, "Thy pardon, milady?"

Another short, soft laugh, and a real smile came to her face at that. Now how could she stay cross with him for very long when he did something like that? It was almost adorable... Almost. Lorelei slipped her hand into Geri's. "Given," she told him, her voice as soft and cool as water poured over a burning cut. Some of that old wolfish glint returned to his copper eyes.

"Didn't break any skin, did I?" Geri inquired. Lorelei pulled back one side of her long, black hair, showing him her pale, pointed ear. Not a scratch. "Oh good!" He declared, and the pair shared a smile. Right then, a ringtone that sounded a lot like "Mitternacht," by E Nomine, started to sound off from Geri's pocket. The fenris snarled - literally _snarled_ - and rolled his eyes as he took out his phone to check who was calling him. _Oh for the the love of..._ He flipped open his phone. "What!" Geri barked.

A very deep, rough, and unamused-sounding voice on the other end of the line growled, "Where are you?"

"Where am I?" Geri echoed. _"In. Public."_ He dropped his voice lower, "This had better be good."

"Watch your tongue, pup," the voice on the other end snarled. "Remember who it is that you're speaking to." The blond lycanthrope rolled his copper-colored eyes again.

"As if I could ever forget," he drawled. "What do you need?"

As Geri carried on his conversation, Lorelei drifted over to the back hall that she had previously been heading to. The hall led to the tavern kitchen, but between the door to the tavern proper and the door the kitchen there was a counter along one wall, with all its drawers and cupboards full of various and sundry first aid items for a vast array of creatures, given that there was such a colorful variety of folk that frequented her place, and unexpected things could always be expected to happen. Installed into this counter was a sink and a faucet, from which a smooth stream of pure water would flow when turned on. Pure water was a precious commodity almost anywhere in the world, these days. The whole city had a pipe-network that had been engineered by goblins to bring it to the Hidden population. Originally it had been for profit - gold and shiny things - no different than any other business cartel. But after enough _deaths_ stacked up in the city once the humans started putting chemical additives into the municipal water supply, it became clear that such practice couldn't continue, for there _was_ no alternative for Hidden folk, and it was made freely accessible, provided that you made it known that you needed it, spoke to the right goblins about it and had your place piped into the network. The Troll Market had such pipes running all over the place. Lorelei would never understand how humans could tolerate all those chemical additives and heavy metals in their water. It was disgusting.

There was a long, wide mirror on the wall just above the counter, and on the counter-top was the glass bowl full of waterlilies that Wink had sent. Lorelei had put them here because she wanted them to be a in a place where she would see them often. The river faery smiled to herself as she took a glass from one of the cupboards and filled it with some pure water from the tap, and then poured it into the flower bowl, topping off the water-level. The flowers would fade one day, given that they were severed from wherever they had grown, and she had no means to prolong their life, not like this, but for as long as she could, she would treasure having them. Lorelei gently lifted out a pure white flower, very lightly coming into contact with one of the bejeweled miniature _koi_ swimming in the bowl with a fingertip as she did so, and held the bloom to her face. She breathed deeply the sweet fragrance of the water-flower in her hand, gently caressed at its soft white petals with her nose and her cheek, and closed her eyes.

She wanted to see him again. So much. Lorelei had always understood that Wink had a duty to his prince, and that the mutual pursuits of both men took them in and out of her life, season by season - a few days, sometimes half a year, who could ever know? But knowing such things only made her anxious now, waiting for that next time that they would meet up or that he would come by. She wanted to hear his deep voice again, see his smile and his twinkling one eye, she wanted... Lorelei smiled into the soft center of the white waterlily, remembering strong, rough troll fingers on her arm, on her shoulders, in her hair, and she didn't fight the light flush that came to her cheeks and chest at these thoughts, but rather, it made her smile to herself all the more. Taking one last deep breath, she returned the waterlily to the bowl with its fellows, and then filled the glass that she had pulled out with some cool water and took a long drink.

_Upon the soonest opportunity that I am afforded, my dear Lorelei..._ She took another deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

Wiping the glass dry and putting it away, Lorelei returned to the main room of the tavern, where Geri had finished talking on the phone. The fenris met her halfway. "Listen," he said, "something came up, so I'm gonna have to go now." Lorelei nodded with an "okay" as Geri continued, "So, I'll see you... later, I guess." The river faery nodded again. The blond wolf-shifter reached for her hand, and gently brushed his thumb back and forth over her smooth knuckles as he slowly brought it up to his mouth, and placed a soft, almost courtly kiss on the back of her slender fingers, the hairs of his goatee tickling the back of her hand. His coppery stare into her ultra-gold eyes was full of glittering intensity, and he smiled his wolf's smile at her as he growled, _"Auf Wiedersehen."_

_"Tschüs,"_ she returned, with a smile on her own face, as Geri turned and left the room, heading towards the exit.

On his way out, Geri heard a deep voice rumble to him, "Best have a care with that one, boyo..." The fenris looked up and to his left, and met the one shining eye of a big, brawny, scar-faced cave troll. It was the same troll that had taken up Lorelei's attention when he had come around not that many days back. Geri's eyes nearly glowed in the dark with the glare that he leveled up at the face of the troll, who continued, "She was twice your age before you were even born." The blond wolf-shifter clenched and unclenched his clawed fists, and growled under his breath through gritted fangs, the troll only stood with his huge arms folded casually, very light smile playing over the edges of his mouth.

Geri didn't have time for this. He had somewhere that he needed to be. Snarling, he turned and stalked his way out of the door of Fafner's Cave, while the troll remained standing where he was, a smirk on his tusked face.

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><p><strong>AN** - Yes, it's true, "fuck me" or "fuck me dead" is a common idiomatic obscenity for "incredible" or "unbelievable" or "I can't believe it."

- The card game that Geri and Lorelei are playing is a variation of Rummy.

- The "fifth of a second" thing is actually important, because I read somewhere that collaboratively averaged data in the field of Human Sciences shows that in relationships that last (we're talking "death do us part," folks that see their golden 50th anniversary, and so on), it only takes a fifth of a second to actually fall in love, and by the time you know it's happened, it's too late. Keep in mind that this is "relationships," and not "marriages" exclusively, though marriages are included.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS <strong>

Gratuliere! = Congratulations!

Komm, lass uns tanzen = Come on, let's go dance.

Nicht! = Don't!

Schnautze = German colloquialism for "shut your mouth"

Tschüs = bye


	7. Coruscation Part 4

Only half a dozen this week because I've been hammering away at Part 2 of _Silver And Gold_ like a demon.

As usual, Non-English translations are at the bottom, right before the "Review" button. It's such a spiffy little button, really, you should try clicking on it sometime! ;)

_Update June 13th: All flashes for this shot have been approved as canon/fanon. Yay!_

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><p><strong>CHOCOLATE<strong>

Lorelei. _Loved._ Chocolate. Period.

Not the sickly-sweet stuff that human children always bought, oh no. _Real_ chocolate. Chocolate so rich and dark that it nearly dilated your eyes and kicked your pulse up a notch.

But Mr. Wink had really outdone all others who had ever given her chocolate before with this gift that he held in his hand for her. It was a waterlily, neatly set in a shallow, golden box, with a delicate glass lid over it, made entirely of _chocolate!_ Each individual petal was infused with the extract or essence of a unique taste. One was mint, another pomegranate, and yet another was essence of rose. There was cherry, vanilla, lavender, cinnamon, and others more, on into the center, which was infused with honey.

No reason. No occasion. Wink had had it made for her only to see her smile.

And smile she _did._

Wink very much enjoyed watching Lorelei savor every chocolate petal as it melted in her mouth.

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><p><strong>FLOWERS<strong>

They were lilies, dark red and elegant, like trumpet-shaped blooms of glistening blood. Very lovely. And very Geri.

_"Natürlich. _They _would_ be this color, wouldn't they?" Lorelei said with wry rhetoric to Wink, who was sitting at the bar when the beautiful blood-red bouquet arrived for Lorelei, who was presently on shift but enjoying Wink's company all the same as she worked. She didn't even attempt to smell their fragrance, both troll and rhinemaiden already knew that she had no care for the scent of flowers in the family of proper lilies, the sweetness of it was much too sharp and too strong for her taste... and yet here they were... a whole bouquet of them.

Lorelei sighed, and the troll chuckled, "The boy's doing a fine job of chasing his tail, isn't he?"

The Germanic siren's obsidian eyebrows quirked. "Huh, and here I thought that he was chasing _mine,"_ she said, and both warrior and tavern-keeper laughed together at that.

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><p><strong>FOREVER <strong>

_(Long ago & far away, in Bethmoora, in the time of the royal elf twins' adolescence) _

The young prince, Nuada, stood leaning against a column, firegold eyes fixed on something. The silver cave troll warrior, Wink, came up behind the prince and saw immediately what it was... and it didn't surprise him at all.

Princess Nuala.

No other thing in the world held the prince's esteem or attention so surely as she did.

The young elf-prince sighed, almost heavily. "Everything I feel, she feels," he said, knowing that the troll was there. "Everything I know, she knows." He turned his head to glance back over his shoulder to look the troll in the eye, briefly, before he returned his eyes to the princess. His voice became softer, almost as though he were talking to himself, "And yet, there are days now when it's as though she understands _nothing_ of it. How did my twin ever become capable of being a stranger to me?"

The troll warrior laid a massive, fatherly hand on the young elf's shoulder. "I think she understands that there is no man yet born who loves her as dearly as you do, but children grow up, young Highness, they change into what they must be. Man and woman are opposites, and this is what you and your sister will only find more and more to be true."

"Opposites," echoed Nuada, softly, almost absently. After a minute, the prince turned to fully face the silver warrior. "Have you ever loved, Wink?"

Somehow staying on top of the sudden change in subject, Wink answered, "You know that I have, my prince."

The prince folded his arms tightly across his chest, almost as though he were cold. "I take it that you know, then, what loneliness is," he said softly. It was not a question.

"Aye, my prince," Wink rumbled. "That I do. Though not for the same reasons as you do, I can see." The towering warrior spared a glance in the direction of the princess. "Take heart, lad, 'tis not Time that heals all things, but what Time brings you. The world changes much in as short a span as even a single year, and no pain is forever, not even that of loneliness." Inwardly he thought, _May the gods see fit to have me reminded of that truth again, someday._

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><p><strong>WICKED<strong>

The back-bristles of a cave troll were, naturally, adapted to living in caves, and the need to sense what's behind you down in the dim of those spaces. While the bristles _themselves_ weren't necessarily sensitive, the nerve receptors directly at the base of them _were_ - they responded to light touch - but this wasn't a fact that many had actually _proved,_ beyond taking a troll's word for it, because not many (if any) ever got close enough to a cave troll to touch them thusly and walk away still in one piece.

The ever-adventurous Lorelei, on the other hand, for all that she was a creature of water, seemed to rather enjoy playing with fire... as it were.

Wink curled and uncurled the fingers of both of his hands repeatedly, as the _cruel_ Rhine daughter trailed her fingertips lightly around the base of his bristles, going in complicated patterns from one to the next over his back, smiling when she saw how they stood on end at her whisper-soft touch.

Normally, Wink would have no objection at all to her touching his back. Except that she was touching him like _that._ In public. Where they were anything _but_ alone. Gods.

_"Must_ you tease me so, Lorelei?" Wink growled low in his chest, quietly.

"Hm," snorted Lorelei, her foxy smile making itself known once more as wicked mirth glittered in her golden eyes. Softly she rejoined, "This from the same troll that strokes my eartips when I'm serving patrons, eh?"

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><p><strong>INNOCENCE <strong>

She was always happy to see them, whenever they came. They were always happy to see her, too. She was the best reason of any for them to keep coming back to this place. A little ray of golden light in an ever-darkening world... A world that she would come to know on her own soon enough.

_"Prinz Nuada!"_ Little Lorelei would squeal whenever she first caught sight of him, happily running up to the tall elf-prince with star-blond hair that would bend down with his arms spread wide. He would scoop her up, whirl her around, and give her a close hug like the precious little thing that she was.

She would give him a soft little kiss on his pale cheek with her rose-colored lips, and he would say something like, "Ah, my sweet little Lorelei, another kiss like _that_ and you shall break my heart!" Whereupon all three of their company would laugh heartily at his jest, as light as spring, as deep as earth, and as full and bright as stars.

After that, Nuada would set the little Rhine girl down so that she could make a proper fuss over _Herr Wink,_ and later on, she would sit on the cave troll's lap as she listened with wonder to all that the two men told her of where they had been and what they had done since last they saw her, firelight flickering over her wide golden eyes like the burning of time as it ate away the hours.

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><p><strong>GIFT<strong>

It was the nicest thing that Geri had ever done for Lorelei yet. So far, he'd done all the "same old same old" of buying her flowers, dancing, and dinner.

This time was different.

Music was something that they shared in common. They found that they shared the same tastes, spanning old and new eras. Music was very integral to their sense of who they were, both of them. So when Geri got up in the rave room of Fafner's Cave, on the low stage where sometimes a hired band would play, with his electric (but not his only) guitar, Lorelei _thought_ she had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

She knew that she was wrong the minute that she heard his skilled fingers bring the Largo from the Winter section of Vivaldi's _Four Seasons_ - her favorite snatch of music since she was knee-high to her mother - into brilliant, glorious, and electrified life.

Lorelei's smile would have lit up the New York City night five times over, as Geri beckoned her up beside him, his copper eyes glittering and her hips swaying as she danced to the enlivened beat to which the blond fenris had bent the most beautiful melody that she had ever heard instrument play.

From the door to the tavern proper, Wink watched the scene, his one eye never once leaving the pair on stage, even as a bieresal came up to him with a mug of troll beer - which he downed in four seconds and then grunted for another.

_Well played tonight, boyo,_ the troll thought.

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><p><strong>AN** - VERY IMORTANT NOTE ON **GIFT**: It should be kept in mind that Geri is NOT playing the Largo out of any real thought for Lorelei, he's doing it to one-up any other guy that might also have his eye on her, Wink included - he's a bastard like that. And Wink is NOT actually jealous, he's just feeling some pique that the fenris actually pulled something off that truly impressed Lorelei for the first time ever so now she's all glowing and smiling and dancing because of _him_ for the moment.

- For the BEST rendition of the Largo from the Winter section of Vivaldi's _Four Seasons_ that I have EVER heard on an electric guitar (though my fave instrument to hear it on is a piano) go to YouTube, type the keywords _**winter largo vivaldi rock**_ into the search box, and click on the video by **opus13th**. Two minutes and fourteen seconds of _**AWESOME!**_

- It's been mentioned previously in the fic-verse of "Once Upon a Time" and related canon (mostly by me) :/ that Wink has been in love before, but how many times remains undetermined. In **Forever**, he's been in love _at the very least_ twice or thrice before at this point, and is just letting time and circumstance take him wherever it may in that regard. Everyone knows that you shouldn't try to hurry or force Love, after all. :)

- It is actually quite true that there are certain nerves in the body (the skin) that will only fire in response to light touch. Deeper, more solid touch fires a different related nerve set. Anatomy and physiology are such FUN things to know when writing such flash-shorts as **Wicked**, heh heh heh. It was LA Knight's idea to have the back bristles of cave trolls be endowed with any special kind of sensitivity, by the way, so all hail the Authoress-In-Chief, whoo!

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS <strong>

Prinz Nuada! = Prince Nuada!

Herr Wink = Mr. Wink

Natürlich = Naturally/of course


	8. Silver And Gold Part 2: Touch of Time

**SUMMARY:** Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in _Chapter 41: Silver and Gold_, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get _that_ there?

**PART 2:** Directly continued from _Silver And Gold Part 1: Taste of Blood,_ Geri has left the building, and Wink has arrived, so now we get to the start of Wink's day spent with Lorelei.

A/N - German translations at the bottom in the end-notes. A few things may be quoted from or alluding to _Chapter 37: When You're Gone (Part 1)_ of "Once Upon A Time," or other shorts in this fic.

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><p>There weren't that many people in Fafner's Cave this early in the day, so soon after dawn, so there weren't many to see Wink at the foot of the short set of stairs that lead from the tavern's rave room down into the bar itself, standing almost perfectly still, his one eye caught by the slender form of the hostess of the establishment leaning sideways against the bar, her back to him while she seemed to gaze far off, one of her hands idling through the lower lengths of her long, midnight-colored hair. A passing bieresal tapped Lorelei and gestured towards Wink, and she turned around. Her smile right then was the most bright and beautiful thing that the troll could remember seeing in a long, long time. A smile of his own pulled up at the corners of his mouth, and he stepped forward to meet her halfway as she came towards him. He held out his hand for her, and softly, smoothly, the rhinemaiden slid her hand to fit into his. Her thumb brushed back and forth, as light as a butterfly and as soft as velvet, over the rough skin of his hand, while his large fingers curled around hers like an embrace, his thumb lightly tracing over her fair knuckles. Time stood still around the two of them, as they stood like this, each bearing a look about them that spoke clearly what neither of them had any need to say aloud. <em>I am glad to see you.<em>

"That boy behaving himself?" Wink grunted, giving a slight jerk of his head back in the direction that Geri had gone.

_"Was?"_ It took a second for Lorelei's thoughts come around to processing what Wink was saying. "Oh! Geri. The, ah, fenris, _ja..."_ She lifted her eyebrows in a kind of "shrug" that used only the muscles of her finely-featured face. "So far he's demonstrated the ability to _stop_ when he's told," she acknowledged, before she added in an analytical undertone, "which is remarkable for one of his kind. It shows a high degree of strength of will, which stands to make him very dangerous to his rivals in pack-warfare."

"Hm," Wink grunted, unenthusiastically. "Glad to hear it." He made a mental note of the name _Geri_ in connection with that fenris. "But," he growled, "if he ever _forgets_ his manners..."

The river faery's face immediately split into a puckish smile, the points of her white teeth contrasting sharply with her soft, rich red lips. "Then you shall be the first to hear of it," she responded, her aurulent eyes twinkling. _"Ich verspreche es."_ Lorelei pulled the towering troll with her over towards the bar, her hand never leaving his for even a moment, and once they were seated, facing each other, she brought her other hand to rest on his as well, brushing smoothly over the back of his rough knuckles, the outside of his thumb, all the way to his wristguard, and back around again. Enveloping his hand in her touch, igniting a tingling warmth in his chest that spread to his smile as he looked at her.

_Still as lovely as always,_ he thought, _and yet lovelier still._ Her eyes, her smile, all of it was familiar and new at the same time. _Gods,_ the way that she _looked_ at him now! It was enough to bring a man to his knees, or a human to his certain death.

The faery beauty gave the silver warrior's hand a small squeeze as she said, in a voice like ethereal gold catching on mist, "I was thinking of you earlier, just a while ago. I've been hoping for when I would see you again." Her warm smile broadened, "And now here you are... _Endlich."_ She gave a very soft, short sort of little laugh, golden eyes dancing like sunlight on rippling water.

The cave troll's one eye shone brightly at the river maiden. "My word, and my honor, I have upheld, I came at the soonest opportunity," he growled softly, brushing his thumb over Lorelei's slender fingers. His touch started flutters in her belly. His smile and the way that his eye held hers had them wrapping around her lower spine and crawling all the way up to her heart. "For your fine drink and your even finer company, for as long as you can spare, beautiful Lorelei." There it was again. That incredible depth and rare dimension of sincerity in the way that he called her "beautiful."

Lorelei broke her eyes from his for a moment, took a breath and said, with a very faint shiver in her voice that did not escape Wink's notice, "Actually, I have no plans at all for today, so my time is all yours, for as long as you may stay." Wink's smile broadened considerably at those words, and Lorelei returned it with another soft squeeze of his hand. "Troll beer?" He gave a short grunt and a nod by way of "yes, please," and a bieresal made short work of bringing the troll his drink. Lorelei got up from where she sat to fetch her own drink. Cider, brewed and bottled by a local clurichaun and sold only through a few select places in Manhattan, Fafner's Cave being one of them. The bottles resembled something very close to human cola bottles, complete with crimp-edged metal caps, but there was no lead in the glass, and the caps were not made from cheap plastic-coated scrap metal. Wink started into his drink as Lorelei sat down with her bottle of cider and a bottle-opener. She wrapped one hand high around the neck of the bottle to hold it steady while she made to pry off the cap with the other... But for some reason this cap just didn't want to come off. She tried a little harder.

_"Ach!"_ Lorelei hissed. The bottle of cider, with its bent cap still half-clinging to it resolutely in mockery, managed to stay on the bar as the Germanic siren sharply retracted her hand from around its slender neck, having acquired a wound from the serrated edge of the cap in her brief battle with it, as it bent suddenly in awkward defiance of her efforts to remove it. Wink reacted instantly by setting down his mug of beer and grasping her slender hand in his, inspecting the damage with the critical eye of one who was quite accustomed to gauging the severity of wounds. It was a shallow cut, about an inch long, nothing more serious than broken skin. Glistening gold began to well up between the sliced edges and trickle thinly over her dove-white palm.

"Where is the nearest outlet for water from here?" Wink inquired.

"There is a faucet with a sink," Lorelei responded, pointing towards a back hallway off one side of the bar, "in the counter along the hall to the kitchen." Still carefully holding the river maiden's hand in his, Wink began to pull her along with him in that direction. Lorelei smiled, laughing a little as she said humorously, "Well there's no need to lead me about like a child, Wink."

The troll snorted. "I haven't thought of you as a child for a _long_ time," he rumbled. "Not since you sauntered into your parents' tavern one night with a _bzou_ on your arm. Your mother couldn't decide whether to be proud or mortified!" They both laughed at the memory, his deep, gravelly laughter contrasting with her lighter, clearer voice. That particular incident had been about a year and a half after Lorelei's aging had started to slow. For ten years of her life, Lorelei had _not_ been a child but not _entirely_ a woman yet, either. Rhine folk matured exceptionally quickly for sentient fae, though not at all at the incredibly accelerated rate that demons and angels did. The closest creature to compare to was (regrettably) a human. Essentially, a Rhine child and a human child grew and developed at the same rate... for as long as they were children. Once little girls became young women, however, dramatic differences became apparent. A human lass would take four to six years to mature, and then she would continue to age and eventually whither and die. One of Lorelei's kin would take twice that long - eight to twelve years - and then she would continue to age only up to a certain point past her adolescence (early twenties by human reckoning), and then Time would stand still.

Forever a maiden. Forever beauteous. Forever living while mortal creatures died.

Though she was born before the sinking of the Titanic, Lorelei was now as she had always been ever since sometime in the nineteen-thirties, and she always would be. Nothing had changed in nearly seventy years. Nothing ever would. Such was the fact of reality.

_"Na ja,_ the way that I remember it," Lorelei continued, "is that she was a little of both. Proud that her daughter could charm such a creature so effortlessly, but mortified that said daughter would bring home a 'wild animal' - as she called him - and in all seriousness, essentially ask, _'Kann ich ihn behalten?'"_ Troll and Rhine daughter both laughed again at that, and then Wink stopped laughing once he stepped into the hallway that led to the kitchen. Lorelei _might_ have wondered if something was amiss, were it not for the _glow_ that he radiated, through the shine in his eye, the smile on his craggy face, and through that which she picked up on empathically from him. It wasn't difficult to deduce what might have brought this about.

Right there, on the counter-top, was the glass bowl of waterlilies that Wink had sent her.

"Kept them here did you?" The silver troll rumbled with a wide smile.

Lorelei responded with a sparkling smile of her own, "I wanted them to be where I would see them often. They are too wonderful to set just anywhere." Her words nearly made the troll's smile into a grin.

Momentarily letting go of the river maid's cut hand, Wink turned the lever of the faucet to the "on" position, and then he gently set his hand at her waist, partially over her hip, to guide her to stand in front of him. Tiny sparks flew from where his large, warm hand touched her to the column of her spine, singing up and down her nerves, and back again. It was _extremely_ hard for Lorelei to keep down the lightest-gold flush that threatened to rise to the surface of her fair skin. Once she was in position, near the sink, Wink's hand slid forward from her hip to her elbow, and smoothly down the length of her arm to where the long, elegant sleeve of the champagne-gold shrug that she wore over her Valentine-red cami-top ended and her milky wrist began. The pads of his thumb and his final finger slid over the inside of the edges of her palm, giving the appearance of him unfolding or uncurling her hand like a leaf, until her hand lay splayed out in his, the back of it resting softly against his palm. His large thumb curled over to rest with the pad of it at the outer edge of her palm, and he guided her hand in his under the small stream of cool water. Like all creatures with scales or skin who were adapted to aquatic living, Rhine folk were slippery to the touch when in their natural element, and so Wink's thumb slid easily over Lorelei's wet palm, passing in small, slow circles, clearing away the tracks of gold that had traced their way over her skin from the cut at the inner edge of her palm. Lorelei was _acutely_ aware of the troll's presence close at her back, dwarfing her, utterly engulfing her in the electromagnetic aura of his existence, as he smoothly traced over and over again the lines of her hand, the veins underneath, circling down lazily over the delicate, slippery skin of her wrist, where her pulse beat hard in time with his, and sweeping back up to the ends of her long, slender fingers. Lorelei already lost the battle with the amber flush that bloomed over her cheeks and chest.

The natural slick of her skin would help her to heal, Wink knew, but he was in more than enough of a mood to act on the rather undeniable urge to play along with sentimental superstition, as it applied here. With his remarkably dextrous mechanical right hand, he turned the water off again, as he curled his fingers carefully about the fair hand of the dark-haired faery beauty that lay nestled in his left. She turned to face him while he lifted her hand at the end of her long, slender arm up to his mouth.

When his surprisingly smooth lips slid over the delicate skin of her palm, Lorelei felt something indescribable crackle from the nerves in her hand, down her arm, and play like a lightning-storm over her spine, and through her slightly shivering shoulders and thundering heart.

As for Wink, he did his best not to linger, for he was quick to realize that if he allowed himself to, he very likely would not be able to bring himself to stop anytime soon. Or possibly _ever._ Touching her skin - softer than a swan's feather - was something that he found enjoyable enough as it was with just his _hand._ Touching her as he did now, with his _mouth... Gods, so sweet..._

Neither of them seemed to pay all that much attention to how his breathing had deepened by a fraction or how her wine-red lips had parted as he did this, though both had noticed it, vaguely.

When his mouth came away from her hand, he held onto it still, tracing light little circles in the center of her palm with his thumb. His shining one eye and her ultra-gold gaze held each other. "Better?" Wink rumbled, his voice as low and deep as the earth itself.

"_Ja,"_ breathed Lorelei, in a whisper like the lightest air passing through reed grasses in the utter stillness before dawn.

_"Entschuldigung!"_ The voice of a bieresal barked, shattering the fragile quiet of the moment as it scurried between the startled pair on its way to the kitchen. The warrior and the river maiden hastily parted way for the bieresal, and as it passed Lorelei looked at Wink with an apologetic smile, whilst the irritated troll glared after the sprite and briefly imagined knocking it upside the head.

"It would appear that uninterrupted privacy is a rare commodity these days," said Lorelei almost wistfully, halfhearted humor very evident in her smile and in her voice, like softly chimed water-glasses.

"Indeed," muttered Wink in something very akin to a growl.

Lorelei took a breath and let it out in a sigh. Then something sparked in her eye, almost like a sunbeam glancing off a pirate's coin, and her aspect changed as a new idea took hold.

"Would you..." Lorelei bit her lip just a little, her manner becoming suddenly uncharacteristically shy as Wink turned his head to look at her. "If Silverlance does not require you to be on your way soon, would you..." She trailed off for a moment.

_Say it!_ Her mind told her. _Just ask him!_

"Would you like to go to my place upstairs?"

Wink's eye widened.

For a moment, neither one of them said anything. The flutters in Lorelei beat hard and frenziedly of their own accord against the confines of her flesh, like fish in a bag of water, while Wink's heart pounded like a smith's hammer and his blood flashed as hot as a goblin forge. "If you can stay," the rhinemaiden finally said, softly, like the first rain of spring.

Wink thought of how the clock had sounded off in the small hours of the night that Lorelei had shared her company and a bottle of rare elf wine with him and how he had wished that he hadn't had to leave then, but he did anyway. He thought of how Lorelei had eventually had to get back to her work shift when he came by to see her again after that, and tend to her bar full of patrons besides him. He thought of those twenty minutes that they'd had alone in Little Budapest together that still scorched him whenever he lay his head down to sleep – _only_ twenty minutes, and not a minute longer.

Wink had given his word to Lady Dylan that she would see Prince Nuada tonight, but in order for that to happen he would have to return to the prince, apprise him of the mortal woman's acceptance of his words and his gifts, so that the elf could be on his way.

_My time is all yours, for as long as you may stay... _

Silverlance could wait.

Sunset was hours away, anyway.

_**To Be Continued...**_

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><p><strong>AN** - A clurichaun is a kind of Irish fairy similar to a leprechaun, but instead of making shoes, they're always drunk or looking for their next drink.

- Getting cut when the bottle-cap bends sharply all-of-a-sudden as you're trying to get it off is something that's actually happened to me before.

- A bzou is a kind of lycanthrope from the folklore of French peasants, and _supposedly_ different from a loup-garou, which is a proper werewolf. The best-known bzou in history is the original Big Bad Wolf that figures in the earliest-known recorded stories of Little Red Riding Hood. The particular bzou alluded to in _this_ short is the previously mentioned "first crush" of Lorelei, from _All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking._ Ah, young love. :)

- The thing about the rate at which Rhine folk age and mature is ENTIRELY my own conjecture, and does not come from any actual source to be found in lore, please keep that in mind.

- In the _Hellboy_ comics, HB (big red demon) really does mature quite rapidly. Snippet from the Hellboy Wiki: _"Hellboy also seems to age differently from normal Humans. At the time that young Hellboy tried his favorite food, "pamcakes" for the first time, he was technically two years old but appeared to be far older, around age six. In 1954 he already appeared to be a full grown adult, but was in reality about ten years old. His rapid physical maturation is in contrast to his physical rate of aging, which seems to be much slower than normal. Throughout the sixty year span of his life, Hellboy seems to have ceased to age ever since reaching physical maturity."_ This seems to have been ignored and bent around quite a bit in the movies, though, because in the first movie Agent Clay says to John Myers, "He doesn't age like we do. Think reverse dog-years, he's barely out of his twenties!" But in _Hellboy II_, in the 1955 Christmas scene, HB looks roughly his real age, like a regular 10 to 11-year-old, but demonic. Really makes you wish that Hollywood would make up its mind, huh? ;)

- The "slippery in water" factor of Rhine maids is something I figured from general knowledge of biology. Animals adapted to living in aquatic environments that don't have fur (otters and polar bears) or fuzzy hides (seals) tend to have a slime coating to their skin or scales that keeps them from being as wrinkled up as you or I, and protects them as a first line of defense in the elements of their habitat. While Lorelei doesn't get all thick-coated in _slime,_ per se, she does become quite slippery smooth. She's one slick chick, heh heh.

- The mouth is universally in the top 5 most sensitive organ sets in all known creatures that _have_ a mouth, and in humans it's the set that has the second highest density of nerve endings and touch receptors in the body (you can probably guess which other set has _the_ highest density *ahem*). This is why kissing/touching with the mouth is so significant, and I figured that trolls weren't much different in that regard. Got a mouth. Got lips. Great.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Was? = What?

Ich verspreche es = I promise (it)

Endlich = Finally/At last

Kann ich ihn behalten? = Can I keep him?

Entschuldigung! = Excuse me!

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><p>Below this bit of text is the "Review" buttonlink. If you are a fan of Wink/Lorelei, then please, click on it and give me some feedback to let me know how I'm doing. It really _does_ help to make this story better.


	9. Coruscation Part 5

Non-English translations at the bottom. Some things will be referenced from Chapter 34 of _Once Upon A Time._ You get your choice of either brownie (dessert) or brownie (house sprite) if you catch them, but you have to point them out in your review.

_Update June 13th: Almost all flashes in this shot are canon/fanon, only **Prince** and **Princess** are pending because LA Knight loved them and is figuring out where they might fit in "Once Upon A Time."_

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><p><strong>SMILE <strong>

_(Co-running with Chapter 8 of "Once Upon A Time," sometime during Dylan & Nuada's initial separation after the events in the healing sanctuary.) _

"Zwezda hunk at nine o'clock, looking this way," said Vica in sotto voce to Lorelei at their usual outside table at the coffee shop owned by Vica's brother.

_"Und?"_ Lorelei rejoined after giving a passing glance in the direction that her friend had indicated, candid disinterest dripping from her voice and her casual way of carrying on, sipping her hot beverage.

_"Istenem,"_ the young táltos breathed, still checking out the handsome elf with cat-like eyes of gleaming steel gray and hair as dark as blackest oblivion. "He just licked his lips when you pursed _your_ lips to blow on your coffee." Eyes like dragon's gold rolled skywards and an amused half-smirk manifested on Lorelei's blood-red lips, while Vica kept staring at the elf in question. "He _reaally_ looks good," commented the táltos softly. "What I wouldn't do for something like _that_ in bed one of these days."

The rhinemaiden gave a soft snort of a laugh (luckily having already swallowed her sip of the steaming dark liquid in her cup), and a lopsided grin pulled her mouth up and to the left as she rested one arm on the table and cradled her chin in her hand. "For someone who is divinely born, you don't tend to express very 'godly' thoughts whenever a pair of strong shoulders and a lean waist crosses your path, my friend," said Lorelei with a clear sparkle of fondness in her golden eyes and in her tone of voice.

Vica shot Lorelei a very botched attempt at a scathing look, her smile far too wide to be taken very seriously, and retorted, "Hey, divine powers and divine purpose do not exclude one from having less-than-pristine thoughts, so live with it."

A scoff from the Rhine daughter as she muttered into her drink, "Thanks to you, I do."

_"Szívesen,"_ said Vica cheerily, and both women burst out laughing. Then the younger woman pointed with a jerk of her chin. "What about the minotaur at four o' clock? Would it interest you to know that he's got his eyes on us right now?"

_"Soso,"_ Lorelei interjected in a soft voice that flowed like run-off from mountain snow, her jet black brows quirking in a clear expression of intrigue. The river faery turned her head to look, and sure enough, only a little ways off stood the form of a young minotaur, his eyes on the two women. A softer version of Lorelei's characteristic fox-like smile curled the corners of her crimson mouth and twinkled in her eyes, and she tilted her head just a little in acknowledgment of him. The horned male scratched behind his sable bovine ear bashfully, and Vica grinned and giggled at the scene.

"That's one for the minotaur and zero to the elf, then. You and your not-so-secret taste for the wildly whimsical, I swear," chuckled the táltos, shaking her head slightly. The river maiden shrugged, and then both women grinned, raising their coffee cups in a toast.

Right as Lorelei was about to take a sip of her drink, though, she spotted something that looked familiar out of the corner of her eye. Her head flew up to regard it fully, and then her whole manner brightened, a glowing smile lighting up her lovely face and shining in her ultra-gold eyes with recognition. "Wink!" Lorelei called out to the passing cave troll, getting up from her chair. The bristled warrior stopped in his tracks and turned around, his one eye sparkling like a polished jewel as soon as it alighted on the approaching rhinemaiden while a broad smile came to his tusked face.

Vica watched the two of them with a smile, chin cradled in one hand and tapping a rhythm on the table with all six fingers of the other. She could tell in short order that wherever Wink was going, he wouldn't be getting there anytime sooner, and that Lorelei's coffee would be quite cold by the time she got back.

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><p><strong>LOSS<strong>

Life and Death, comings and goings, were all part of an eternal balance. One cannot exist without the other. Such was true of all things in the universe, actually. No thing can exist without its balance, its compliment, its opposite, its other side.

Knowing this doesn't change how it hurts when someone you love leaves you alone in this world in some way, whether by parting ways, or by departing this world altogether.

Wink had lost much in the thousands of years he had lived up to now - friends, family, loves, comrades - some never to be seen or heard again, _ever._ Some slain, others dead in the course of their due path of existence. Others simply wandering elsewhere in the world, to be wondered about, but never to _know_ how they fared and if they had changed at all in the years gone by, if they had lived and loved and lost as much.

Lorelei, too, had lost much, in under a century while she lived. Her country as she had known it when she was a girl and those people that she knew who were swallowed up as it was torn apart and put back together again. Older siblings that came into her life only to walk right out of it again, or were felled by the ravages of the world, some before she'd even had the chance to ever know them in her lifetime at all, only to be heard of in tales that her mother told her of them.

But with Time came Change, and Change will often bring the balance to Loss.

Other friends were found and held dear. New homes made with each new path of adventure. Loneliness or grief was endured and pulled through, and the heart was made glad again by all still worth living for. Each friend, each love, each brother or sister in blood or in spirit, was cherished for what they were _as they_ were, and never sought to be replaced for want of something that was, frankly, irreplaceable in its own right.

Long life dooms one to enduring the whim of Time, and with Time comes Loss. But it is not those precious things that you _had,_ which you lose with Time only to hold in your memory, that makes Forever still worth keeping, rather, it is what Time still brings you... And in the quiet dim under the Manhattan streets, this was a truth that Lorelei and Wink once again remembered, looking into each other's eyes.

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><p><strong>REPUTATION<strong>

Lorelei didn't mind, in fact she found it wildly amusing. No matter where she went with Wink, there was usually someone around who recognized him - had heard of him or knew him - and no small number of those who did were female.

Lorelei grinned whenever dryads would bat their eyelashes at Wink. She'd hide a silent chuckle whenever a fox maiden would give him a coy smile with a quirked eyebrow. She nearly had to fight to contain herself whenever a selkie would speak to the towering troll in a tone of voice that was _so_ inviting.

Lorelei just smiled and politely kept the inward merriment that she derived from it to herself as much as she could, but it was all just far too entertaining! The way that other faery women would practically _embarrass_ themselves around Wink without even knowing what it was they were really doing!

Never once did it make her jealous, though, not even a little. Lorelei knew Wink far too well to ever be that. How could she be jealous, when he looked at her with such tenderness and admiration in his eye, when he touched her with such infinite care and gentleness, when he held her like she was the only thing in his whole world worth having?

Almost everywhere that she went with him, there was a likely chance that somebody would be there that wanted him.

He made it clear with every breath that he only wanted her.

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><p><strong>PRINCESS<strong>

"This can't be real," Dylan breathed, staring at her reflection.

_"Nein,"_ said Lorelei, smiling at her, "it is actually among the _most_ real of all things that you will ever see."

Dylan just stared at herself in wonder. No scars. None. She was... _so_ pretty, but... She _knew_ that she had scars on her face, and she _knew_ that she was just wearing ordinary clothes, but the radiant brunette looking back at her from the mirror that she and Lorelei stood in front of had _no_ scars at all, and she was wearing a simple yet elegant style gown that looked as though it had been spun from purest silver flame, and a crown of stars rested about her head like a stellar, coronet-styled halo. Lorelei didn't look too much different than how she was, though in the reflection she was wearing what looked like a slip of a gown woven from the essence of turbulent water, and her fair skin shimmered with a dusting of gold, like the specks of mica often found in riverbeds. Her hair and skin looked slick and wet, too, though the tall maiden was quite dry.

"What you see," Lorelei said softly, "is the truth. This mirror is not glass on silver, but carefully crafted, flawless quartz. The same little-known variety of quartz, in fact, that Doctor Schufftein crafted some diopter glasses from that were designed to see through different layers of fey glamour and illusion, and show things as they really were to 'ordinary' folk, though you probably have never heard of Schufftein. What you see, Dylan, is your true form."

True form... But how...?

Lorelei answered Dylan's question before she could even find the words to ask, as the perceptive Rhine daughter raised one slender white hand to rest hovering in the air by the mortal woman's brow, though in the mirror it looked as though she was touching the starry crown that circled her curly-locked head. "Star Kindler's child," the river faery whispered in Dylan's ear.

The brunette's spine prickled wondrously as the river siren sang in softest tones by her ear, one of her improv verses.

_"'Tis not royal in blood that thou art,  
>Yet thou be a princess, in soul and in heart." <em>

If Dylan's smile got any wider her face was going to crack, she just knew it. The faery woman wore a smile of her own, pearly points of her teeth gleaming against the ruby red of her lips. _"Komm,"_ said Lorelei finally. "There is more to see in this museum and our men will no doubt die of bereavement without us." Smiling and laughing, the two ladies started back to where the two warriors that they adored so much awaited them.

Dylan felt she would never really understand in a million years why Nuada insisted on staying behind when they had come to the room with the mirror. What was it that he didn't want to see? ... Or was it, that he didn't want _her_ to see?

* * *

><p><strong>SNOW<strong>

Wink couldn't help thinking that the snowflakes bedecking Lorelei's thick black tresses were finer than any crown in the world, as he carried her in his arms over the piles of snow on the ground to the nearest way into the labyrinthine world of the city's underbelly. They sparkled prismatically, like feathered stars caught up in the night-spun strands of her long hair, and melted and shone like the tears of a comet when she nuzzled in closer to him, seeking more of the warmth that his body offered. Black butterfly lashes closed over eyes of dragon's gold as the rhinemaiden blocked out the winter frost and the sounds and smells of the city, and focused instead on the troll that held her, the sound of his strong heartbeat near her pointed ear, and the unique deep scent of him, filling her senses with him as much as she could, until he carefully set her down again at their destination.

* * *

><p><strong>PRINCE<strong>

"So..." Nuada said in a tone that was thick with intention, his arms folded and his stance as one of someone who had absolute authority.

"No," said Wink flatly, already knowing the implied question that the blond elf was asking.

"No?" Nuada arched one white-gold eyebrow at his vassal.

"No," repeated Wink. "And do not think that you can stand on your princely authority to have me change my mind, Highness. _I_ may have a sworn duty to you, but Lorelei does not, and she is every bit as involved as I."

"Yes," Nuada said mildly. "I determined as much from the way that she was lying curled up under your arm looking like the very _picture_ of sleeping serenity itself when I arrived."

Wink scowled at his prince and then looked away, scratching at the spur of his broken tusk as he grumbled something under his breath.

Lorelei stepped out from the other room, fully clothed, her hair wet from having a brief wash to be rid of whatever might have been left from... Nuada stopped his thoughts right there before they could conjure images in his head that he decidedly did _not_ want to think about in regards to his friend and his vassal together. _"Ich bin bereit,"_ she said, her voice as soft as a good morning kiss.

"I'll escort you home," Wink rumbled to her.

Escort her home? Did he now forget so readily that he had a duty to consider? Did he not think that Nuada perhaps required his services?

Nuada started to say something, but was immediately silenced by the stone-cold glare that the troll leveled at him. The prince then shut his mouth and merely gave a short nod, deciding not to push his luck with his vassal in this. There were some things, the elf knew, that you simply _did not_ argue with a troll... Even if you _were_ a prince.

* * *

><p><strong>TANGLED<strong>

Geri liked catching Lorelei's long, soft hair and winding it through his clawed fingers whenever she was close enough for him to get the chance. He enjoyed how the ebon tendrils of it slid so smoothly through his grasp. He liked even better when it was tangled in his loose grip and she couldn't get away. He would always growl a few low, soft words by her ear, giving her a few light, grazing touches along the side of her cheek with his nose before he ever let her go. Sometimes she would smile, amused, and other times she would roll her eyes, flashing like new-minted coins with mild annoyance. His favorite reaction was whenever the lightest bit of color would rise to her cheeks.

* * *

><p><strong>PAIN<strong>

_(In a safe hideout in the underbelly of NYC, after Lorelei and Wink have escaped the Midnight Fest - see Coruscation Parts 1 & 2 in this fic and Chapters 55 - 57 of "Once Upon A Time" for reference. Unrelated to __**Snow**__, above.)_

He wasn't bleeding anymore, thank all the gods that ever watched over and looked on her with favor, and his wounds would have a fighting chance to knit together and heal now. They had time, they were safe. But they were not well. Lorelei could sense the simmering coils of pain in Wink as he struggled to _just sleep._ He hurt so much. He could scarcely even breathe without that slightest movement screaming all through him. Lorelei's own aching bruises weren't even a fraction as bad as everything that wracked his body in merciless concert.

Tentatively, as carefully and gently as she could ever attempt to be, the rhinemaiden lifted the flesh-and-blood hand of the silver troll that she sat watching over and placed it with the palm resting over her chest and collarbones, over her heart. She held it there as she closed her eyes, inhaled a deep breath, and intoned a single, prolonged, and exquisitely beautiful note for the full exhale of that breath. Then she took another deep breath and did it again, but at a different pitch this time. Again and again, she repeated this. Inhale, exhale.

Purest sound, focused through a living creature in such a way that light through a prism could only be termed absolutely pitiful by comparison. Such intensity, such focus of intention would have been considered admirable by an observer, but to Wink, it was the first taste of comfort, of blissful respite, that he had been able to have in all these past several hours. Magic saturated the resonant waves of Lorelei's clear voice, vibrating through her chest under Wink's palm, soothing every throbbing ache, every burning pain that was in the great warrior's form, with a power that felt as no sound and no touch he had ever known. Something utterly indescribable, and beautiful and wonderful.

The river maiden continued on, until the angry pain writhing through her companion's aura all but dissipated completely, and his breathing evened at last and became regular in its pattern. He would sleep now, finally eased in body and mind. Lorelei lay down beside her valiant troll, tucking herself as close to his massive body as possible, her soft skin whispering against his leathery hide. It would do more harm than good if he were to suddenly wake and feel her presence absent from him, even if she were only a little ways off.

* * *

><p><strong>AN** - The Zwezda in **Smile** is just some good-looking elf, not Eamonn (ew, the creepy fop) or anyone else important.

- The most _visually_ interesting versions of a minotaur that I've seen are the white witch's general from _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ (live-action movie from 2005), and the Tauren race from the artwork and stories of the popular MMORPG _World of Warcraft_ by Blizzard Entertainment (computer/video games are _never_ as interesting as their stories. Seriously). Do a search for elves on deviantART and get a boat-load of fantasy-game fan-work. Who knew? :P But as always, THE most epic minotaur _ever_ still remains the original Greek monster in King Minos' labyrinth that was slain by the hero Theseus.

- It should be noted that Vica is **not** meant to be Lorelei's personal Francesca, so to speak, she's just young, and _very_ guy-crazy.

- Who remembers the Schufftein Glasses from the _Hellboy II_ movie? :) Canaries and kittens for everyone that does!

- The coffee shop owned by Vica's brother and the museum with the mirror are NOT in the Troll Market, but in other parts of the city that most mundane folk never see. Note that I said "mundane folk" and not "mortals" or "humans," as (quote from the Hellboy Wiki): _"Little fuss is made over the arrival of human BPRD agents in the Troll Market by the various peoples, indicating that human presence isn't something all that unusual there. It is unknown if the Troll Market is the only place of it's kind in the world but it is indicated ("... over in Jersey, maybe...) that there are other places of supernatural activity than just downtown NYC."_ Which, to me, says that regular freaks like Abe, or Vincent (from the live-action TV series _Beauty and the Beast), _or not-so-obvious freaks like Liz (pyrokinetic) or Dylan (Sight) and (in legend) witches and saints, can often be found mingling about with demons, angels, and fey folk, because _they are people who are aware and __acquainted__ with what's out there_ - that's all it takes.

- The inhale/exhale intonation thing that Lorelei does for Wink is based off something that I learned at a performing arts workshop, to help center yourself and ease tension (and it works, too). It sounds _really_ beautiful when you've got a group together doing it, very harmonious, and the actual pitches and pitch-changes themselves don't matter so much as long as the sound is relaxed (not forced) and you have a unified syllable going, like "aw" or "ooh."

* * *

><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS <strong>

Istenem = (Hungarian) My god/Oh my god

Szívesen = (Hungarian) you're welcome

Und? = And?

Soso = (in the context of calm interest) oh yeah?

Ich bin bereit = I'm ready


	10. Spotlight In Your Eye

So, I _was_ just taking a break from updating, trying to catch up with the revised content in "Once Upon A Time" that I was behind on. But then after reading LA Knight's last update the Muse bit me in the brain (hard) and – against my better judgment – I wrote this. *rubs sore bite mark on brain* Ow. This was originally going to be another flash for the flash-prompt series in this fic, _Coruscation, _but then it got deep and turned into something entirely its own, so I'm posting it as a regular short... Very _short_ short. Nothing fabulous. Now, back I go to catching up. PLEASE ENJOY!

_**PREMISE**_

Something very perceptive that LA Knight said when she read _All's Fair In Love, War And Drinking:_ "I mean, right at this very moment they're just friends, but they're not quite just friends... They're those friends that could very well turn into something else."

And something that I said after reading chapter 54 _(A Father's Love)_ of "Once Upon A Time": "I need to write a prompt-flash set in the 1920s, touching on how [Nuada's] and Wink's perspective of Lorelei evolved as she grew up. Because you know it's got to have changed over that time, just as Nuada and Wink's relationship changed from the troll being like a father to him to also something of a brother."

SUMMARY: So, that's what this is, set in Germany, in the late 1920s, addressing how Wink and Nuada's views of Lorelei shifted, and how there was that "could eventually end up more than that" kind of thing in Wink and Lorelei's friendship, even before they actually started falling for each other in the plot of "Once Upon A Time."

WARNING: You _will_ want to have read _Silver And Gold Part 2_ before reading this.

_Update July 11: LA Knight LOVED this when she read it, btw. *happy-joy* _

* * *

><p>The stage was the only thing not smothered in shadows in the dark room of the music hall. Within that raised pool of light, the tall figure of Lorelei stood, wearing a svelte, floor-length, velvet dress the color of wine, which bared her slender dove-white shoulders and created a romantic contrast with the glossy dark of her long hair. Glittering adornments of finest gold rested at her throat, wrists, and ears. Her eyes shone like polished coins in the stage lights. She was currently singing a duet with an exceptionally broad-shouldered, dark-clad elf, and together their voices wove invisible nets around their audience.<p>

Nuada and Wink were there, sitting at a table, a drink in front of each of them. Both were appreciative of the fine music, but truthfully, the real focus of their attention was the elegant songstress. "I will be the first to admit it," said Nuada. "I would not mind at all if I could be the one that was up there singing with her right now."

Wink grunted in agreement, "You, me, and every other male in the room I would wager."

Lorelei had grown up so beautifully. Both warriors had known, once her aging had started to slow, that she would break a rather extensive list of hearts in just the time that it would take for her to seem less and less like a daughter and more and more like a sister to her mother. It really couldn't be helped. For one thing, she had always been a rather tall girl - by the time she was twelve she already stood at eight inches over five feet - and with every passing year as she grew, she became more lovely, more clever, more charming. _(More dangerous,_ thought Nuada, remembering the cut that she had managed to give him when they were practicing with shortswords the day before last, for which Wink had given him no small amount of derision for the rest of the day.) Remarkable, how things had changed as the beautiful little faery girl that the elf prince had first met had gradually transformed into this glorious and enchanting creature that stood before his eyes. Her aging had not entirely stopped yet, but even an idiot would know that she was all woman by now.

When the stunning Rhine daughter flashed what looked like a rather enticing smile to her duet partner, the blond elf could not help feeling only the faintest prick of masculine irritation. Fates, he thought, she didn't even have to _try._ The prince took a sip of his drink.

His was a rather hopeless case, with her. It wasn't that Nuada was in love with Lorelei, for in fact he was _not,_ nor did he have any particular desire to pursue her, but... He would not deny, even to himself, that if she had been interested, he would have had no objections about reciprocating.

But she wasn't. She never had been. Not in him. Not like that.

She had never made any secret of where she usually found the most excitement when it came to things like that; naturally, though, there _was_ the rare exception every now and again. But he wasn't it.

Ah well, pure _pride_ even letting it get to him in any measure at all, he knew. Nuada took another gulp of his drink and pushed these thoughts aside. He was _not_ someone who used or kept friends of any sort simply for his own vanity's sake, he _refused_ to think of someone that he so dearly liked and respected in such a fashion.

At length, the self-exiled prince glanced over to his burly, bristled companion. How far had Wink's view of Lorelei changed this past handful of years? The blond elf warrior found he could not help wondering. The silver troll always seemed to treat the ebon-haired rhinemaiden... _differently_ somehow from the ways that he typically treated all of their other female acquaintances. There was a sort of fondness in his manner that Nuada had never seen him regard anyone else with - not even Nuala, when the royal twins of Bethmoora were younger and in happier times. How had that fondness evolved as the object of its regard had evolved? The veteran warrior had seemed to see it as only natural once the river faery had begun to dispense with addressing him with the respectful formality of the word "Ihr" and more and more started to speak to him with the familiarity and equality of the word "du," (which she would never do with Nuada, out of respect for his royal station). To him, it was just another thing that was inevitable, apparently. Girls grew up, became friends, lovers, enemies, wives, mothers, ladies, warriors, and queens. It was hardly that much different from how Nuada had become more and more like a brother and not only as a sort of a son to Wink, as the elf princeling grew and became a man. Clearly though, Lorelei did _not_ hold a sisterly place in the rough-hided behemoth's heart. Not at all. Nor did she occupy the same regard that Wink would give to a woman that he sought to woo, either, that much was quite obvious.

She was simply... more than just any kind of friend, it seemed.

Someone dear. Someone that made the troll's one eye brighten like clouds blown away from stars whenever he saw her. Something that there was no distinct word for, as yet.

For now.

The music ended, and Lorelei and her partner took a bow, to the clapping and table-banging and hollers, hoots, whistles, and roars of applause of their audience – including a _very_ admirable roar from Wink. The elf on stage took Lorelei's slender hand in his, and placed a brief, courteous kiss to the back of it, while the ivory points of Lorelei's winning smile gleamed with the golden lights of the stage.

Nuada and Wink raised their mugs high in a toast, hollering in unison, "To Lorelei!" To which the rhinemaiden blushed and smiled all the wider and more brightly.

* * *

><p>AN - In this short, Lorelei stands at six feet tall, and could be pegged for anywhere from seventeen to nineteen years old by ignorant human eyes. All you squeamish folks that cling to post-modern political correctness and tend to retroactively impose it on global history can say "ew" now. :P You sillies.

- Having your friends show up at one of your gigs, and then _very loudly_ toast you for all to hear after you've finished a song is something that has actually happened to me before.

- I do accept anonymous reviews, so you don't even have to have a user account with this site to leave me feedback, just make up a name and say "hello there," I don't even care if it's not in English, heck, I think I would appreciate learning more if it wasn't.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Ihr/du = You (polite/familiar)


	11. Silver And Gold Part 3: Look of Love

**SUMMARY:** Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in _Chapter 41: Silver and Gold_, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get _that_ there?

**PART 3:** Directly continued from _Silver And Gold Part 2: Touch of Time,_ Lorelei has invited Wink upstairs to her place, and Wink _finally_ has some uninterrupted time _alone_ with this woman for once!

**A/N** - German translations at the bottom in the end-notes. A few things may be quoted from LA Knight's "Once Upon A Time," or other shorts in this fic. There _will_ be some elaboration on events from one of the flashes from _Coruscation Part 1._

Also, as of posting this (May 31st, 2012), I've made some revisions to _All's Fair In Love, War, And Drinking_ (chapter 1 of this fic), so you might want to go back and re-read that, but it is absolutely not a necessary thing to continue reading from here.

* * *

><p>The style of the decor upstairs was as old-fashioned as the rest of the building, with rich, vintage wallpaper and furnishings. The ceilings were as high in the upper floors as they were downstairs in the tavern and rave room, making the place very accommodating, even for someone of Wink's size. The antique gold-and-crystal chandelier hanging high above his head in the front room that the door to Lorelei's personal living space opened on to was the first thing to greet the troll's eye as she invited him in. From the front room, there was a generously-sized living room with a very large brick fireplace, over which hung a wide landscape painting of a river, surrounded by lush, dark forest. The clouds in the painting and soft diffusion of the effects of light, in feathering shades of orange, pink, red, and gold, made it difficult to discern whether the scene was meant to be ere dawn or after dusk, and gave the effect of casting a dreamy glow from the painted skies over the haunting scene.<p>

Across from the living room was an elegant dining area, next to a sparkling kitchen that had an _aquarium_ that served as one of its entire walls, aquascaped with river strata and rocks, and a few small sunken castles and houses that served as homes to the very small handful of aquatic demi-fae that cared for the high wall of a tank and its various flora and fauna, including the assorted pan fishes swimming about. It was quite pretty and even artistic in its design, but Wink knew, without having to be told, what the fish were _really_ for. He still remembered how Lorelei had described her first time "fishing" in the pond with her mother when she was a little girl, what it felt like to lure a creature to her from further out in the sun-shot shallows, catch it in her sharp grasp, and then savor the reward of her efforts for the first time. Such natural habits were how her mother and her ancestors before her had all subsisted, before the grand boom of human industry and its subsequent effects on the land came about. Someone like Lorelei, though raised with the ever-changing modernity of twentieth-century, all the same, could not thrive on "cultured" food alone. The fish in the aquarium-wall were for Lorelei's wilder needs, when she needed something fresh and alive.

But the piscine tenants of Lorelei's home interested neither rhinemaiden nor troll, presently. Both were lured towards the kitchen by the sweet, warm, spiced smell of fresh baking and other delights.

Upon reaching the arched entrance to the kitchen, Lorelei grinned at the sight of a sheet of Glühweinkuchen cooling on the central counter and smiled fondly at the kobold tidying up the kitchen, who was doubtless the one responsible for the pastries. Said kobold turned around once she sensed that she was no longer alone in the space of her culinary dominion, and greeted her mistress with a nod, _"Fräulein Lorelei,"_ and her grizzled, bristly guest with a curtsy, "Wink Ironfist."

"Was the plan to surprise me, Gita?" Lorelei asked the kobold, inclining her head towards the Glühweinkuchen with a wide smile. There was just only the faintest sense of something apologetic in her tone of voice. Gita only shrugged and smiled back, as if it was all of no ultimate import whether that _had_ been the idea or not, or whether the intended surprise came now or later, so long as her mistress was pleased. The kobold housekeeper poured what was left of the Glühwein that had been prepared for making the _Glühweinkuchen_ into two glass mugs and set them next to the cooling sheet of pastry, and then resumed setting the kitchen all back to pristine order once more.

Lorelei's golden eyes sparkled as she picked up one of the mugs and proffered it to Wink. "For my honored guest," she said, her smooth voice and charmingly sweet smile making the troll's heart stutter as he took the mug from her. He smiled warmly, giving her a short, soft grunt, by way of "thank you," and as his large fingertips very lightly brushed against the soft skin of the heel of her palm, he watched the lightest glow come to her cheeks and then spread over face, and she seemed to smile a little bit _more_ than she had a minute ago as she turned to take the other mug for herself, which set a twinkle to Wink's eye. Both warrior and water faery raised their mugs in a silent toast, with a dull _clink!_ and as the sweet, spiced taste of the warm alcohol slid over his tongue, Wink's eye drank in his comely hostess, savoring the soft curve of her sweet smile and the sparkle of dragon's gold from her bright eyes.

Gita was kind and polite enough to keep her surreptitious, knowing glances and smiles at the river maid and the great troll to herself. She liked the way that the renowned warrior looked at her mistress; intently, but not like some hopeless, drooling sot, nor like a leering lout. Wink Ironfist looked at Lorelei von der Strom only with appreciation. Possibly for her fine looks, or possibly for her welcome and inviting presence. But Gita was of a mind to judge that it was for a blend of both. For that which the eye both did and did _not_ see. The kobold liked that about the troll, and imperceptibly kept nodding her head with approval. She also liked how the glow at her mistress' cheeks seemed to be trying to make up its mind as to whether it would turn into a blush or not. She knew _that_ look, knew full well what it meant, and was quite pleased to see it. Her mistress deserved to be happy with someone, and she could certainly do a lot worse than Wink Ironfist.

At length, Lorelei _did_ eventually break her gaze from Wink with a soft blush, and only then did she notice the slight quiver in her too-straight posture. She smoothly shifted into a more relaxed position, leaning with the back of her hips against the central kitchen counter, but somehow that only served to make her even _more_ aware of Wink's attention on her, feel more open to his eye. Attempting to focus on something other than how being in the silver troll's company was little by little pulling undone whatever threads held her composure together one by one, Lorelei turned to Gita and asked, _"Wo ist Gunter?"_

_"Hier,"_ replied the gruff, no-nonsense voice of an older kobold from the kitchen's archway, and all turned to see that that is exactly where Gunter, Gita's husband, had appeared. The diminutive sprite gave a short nod to Mr. Wink by way of greeting and acknowledgment to the cave troll, and then gave his full attention to his mistress. The Rhine daughter proceeded to inform her pair of housekeepers that Wink would be her guest today and that it was unlikely that she would need them for anything, but if she did, they would certainly know in due circumstance. Taking that as their hint to depart, the two kobolds only shared a carefully blank look between them with eyes atwinkle, and said nothing more than a polite farewell to the rhinemaiden and troll, as they left for the lower floors to give their mistress some privacy with her burly companion.

Once the two sprites had left, and Lorelei and Wink were quite alone, there were a few long moments where all that happened, all that they did, was sip their glass mugs of Glühwein; unspoken things passing between them in smiles and sparkling eyes. Then Wink shifted his mug to his mechanical hand, and rested his left hand on the central countertop, by Lorelei's hip. A casual shift in posture, it would seem. But Lorelei took the next move, after a last sip of her warm, spiced drink, setting her mug on the countertop off to one side of her, and bringing her hand to rest on his, her fair fingertips just-barely brushing back and forth in tiny, minute spirals over his dark gray hide. The skin of his hand tingled under her soft touch, and then as Lorelei's hand began to slide further up his arm, trailing velvet heat in its wake - whether residual heat from the time spent holding the hot mug of Glühwein or something else, Wink neither knew nor really cared, only knew that it felt wonderful - the silver warrior took it as his cue to have done with vestiges of polite pretense and brought his body closer to her.

Again, she was engulfed by his mere existence, the overlap of electromagnetism - his and hers - humming inaudibly on the atmosphere with the pulse of life.

Lorelei brought her other hand up to rest with the palm on Wink's leather armor, her fingers extending lightly over his skin; the troll set down his mug and carefully took her soft, slender fingers in his metal grasp, moving her hand up to fully rest on his broad chest, his other hand finding its own way from the countertop to curl about her waist, bringing her gently closer to him. Lorelei's dragon-gold eyes flicked up from where Wink had moved her hand on his chest to his battle-scarred face. He was watching her intently, to the point that his eye almost pinned her every move like butterflies, and she pulled in a slow, silent, and somehow shallow breath, as he slowly bent to bring his tusked, craggy face closer to her. She could feel his heart thumping hard in his chest under her hand, matching her own, as he waited for what she would do. A blink of an eye that might have lasted an eternity passed, and the rhinemaiden closed what little distance was left between them, her slender body brought up against his, her face tilted up like edelweiss reaching for the sun. Wink acted on her unspoken invitation to continue by bringing his head even closer to her - _so_ close, he could practically taste her breath - and then he stopped.

One look in his dark, shining eye told the river maid all that she needed to know. She would lead, he would follow. Obliging to his silent terms, Lorelei closed the last inch of space between their faces.

It wasn't a kiss when her mouth touched his. It was a touch that was soft, light, and exploratory as it slid over his thick lower lip. Wink's blood turned to molten gold as Lorelei's sweet, wine-red mouth moved slowly, deliberately, thoroughly over his. Finding her way, taking her time to learn each line and curve by touch, sending tiny sparks shooting down each nerve that she touched with each sliding stroke of her lips. She pressed a little more firmly, and his fingers automatically flexed in reaction at the change in the sweet stimulation, while his breathing deepened, and a shiver went through his body. Raw instinct had him tightening his hold about her waist by just a fraction. Her hand went from where it rested on his chest to the side of his face, her long, elegant fingers curling through his whiskers. Both her eyes and his had been opening and closing and in-between constantly, like window shutters in a strong wind, and Wink saw Lorelei's aurulent eyes look up at him, smoldering, her cheeks aglow with a golden flush. He could feel her slow, shallow breaths as her warm, soft lips carried on their exploration of his.

Magically, the raven-haired Rhine daughter had transmuted the silver cave troll's heart into a new, living incarnation of Mjölnir... and he knew it because it was beating him senseless with thunder and lightning from deep in his chest. When was the last time that anyone had made him feel like _that?_ He couldn't remember.

Lorelei swept down from the corner of Wink's mouth to the center of his lower lip again, and then hovered there for a few beats, making his nerves strain with anticipation, before she at last pressed her mouth to his in a proper kiss, one that was gentle, lingering, and full of feeling. Her shallow breaths deepened, and she inhaled the scent of old leather, metal and stone, deep earthen caverns, and something warm and alive that drew in her senses like a fish to something shiny, something that was entirely unique to Wink the troll. His breath carried the burn of troll beer and the sweetness of Glühwein.

Wink's mouth molded to fit hers in response, returning the feeling. His strong arms held her _so_ close to him, so carefully, her every soft curve pressed against his towering bulk. His left hand went sliding up her back and into her silky black hair. A low, deep, rumbling noise that sounded a lot like _"Mmm"_ escaped Wink. Lorelei pulled back only the _tiniest_ bit, but then she kissed him again, and then again. The troll and the rhinemaiden soon fell into a pattern with each other, each kiss gentle and full of tenderness.

When they came apart for air, Lorelei's heart was drumming a hard pace in her chest that would have daunted a gypsy dancer, and that Wink could feel even through his armor. It was a good thing that he had his arms about her, for if he let her go (which he absolutely did _not_ want to do) he would no doubt only have to catch her again, since she clearly did not have a full hold of her balance. Her smiling mouth was flushed from kissing, and the Harvest Moon would seem pale and wan compared to the luminous glow that colored the swan-fair skin of her lovely face and slender throat.

Her eyes were what held Wink the most powerfully in that moment. He was mesmerized by the golden coruscation of the glimmers that were in her beautiful eyes once again. It swallowed his mind and soul, illuminated his whole world. Was _this_ the true thing that drowning men would yield their lives for? That dragons would jealously kill for, magical voice or no? He could believe that. To have her look at him like _that,_ always, would be the greatest treasure.

Wink's hand slid from Lorelei's hair to cup the side of her face, his thumb stroking back and forth over her flower-soft cheek. She sighed into the touch, and twined her fingers through his whiskers again.

They were about to draw back together again, when a soft, hollow _thump_ stole their attention. Both troll and rhinemaiden's heads whirled to the side at the same time to look. Nothing was out of the ordinary... except for the suspicious fact that one of the fish in the aquarium wall was _blinking_ at them curiously while backing very slowly away from the glass. Lorelei chuffed a laugh, shaking her head, while Wink grumbled and rolled his eye.

"Perhaps this is best continued elsewhere," suggested the silver troll. Lorelei nodded with a "mmm-hmm" and a bright smile, and both the warrior and the river siren departed the kitchen together.

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><p>The furniture in Lorelei's living room would not safely accommodate Wink, (she made a mental noted to have that remedied) but the cave troll didn't seem to mind having to settle for the rug on the floor, for now. Once he was situated, he pulled her down with him and deftly caught her (with the softest interjection of "whoa!" from her garnet lips as he did this), settling her across his lap with a <em>very<em> bright twinkle in his eye. A smile curled up at the corners of his mouth, and Lorelei grinned back, remembering the last time that she had been in this position with him.

"Now," growled the troll warrior, sliding his brawny arms about the slender faery woman, his voice sending a shiver down her spine. "Where were we?" Lorelei's grin pulled wider before she met him halfway in another sweet kiss. Her hands roamed over his broad chest and shoulders, making a mockery of the work of the winter cold outside with the warm velvet of her touch, while _his_ hands kneaded at her back like a cat's paws. At some point, her tongue flashed out across his lip for the briefest instant, surprising him and making his heartbeat skyrocket. The river maiden responded to this with that sly, fox-like smile of hers and a particularly bright sparkle in her dragon-gold eyes, before pulling him back in for more kisses, which he returned with gusto. There was no fire in the living room hearth at the time, but the troll felt _quite_ warm right then. The Germanic siren's hands traveled up to the sides of Wink's face again, idling her fingertips through his soft, bristly whiskers. The great silver warrior let his hands slide from her back to her sides, his large thumbs stroking back and forth in firm strokes over her ribs, and noted with some satisfaction that now it was _Lorelei_ that seemed to be feeling a little warmer. Suddenly Wink frowned. The thumb of his left hand did what could have been described as a tactile double-take over a particular spot on her side, just below her ribs. His frown deepened.

_"Was?"_ Lorelei asked. _"Was ist los?"_

Wink knew that he was more than likely overstepping some boundaries in what he was about to do... but he had to know. Still maintaining the hold that he had on her, the thumb of his left hand swept down and tucked under the hem of Lorelei's rich scarlet-colored top, and swept back up again underneath it, over her soft skin, stopping when the pad of his thumb brushed over what had snatched at his attention.

Scar tissue.

There was no mistaking it. Wink's frown pulled itself even deeper as his thumb traced over the smooth, even line of a scar on Lorelei's side. How was it that she had a scar? He had been acquainted with her long enough to know that she healed from injury quite quickly, even seamlessly, and that _if_ she ever came away from something with a scar (which was rarely, if ever), it always faded into nothing over a fairly short time, so that no one would ever know unless they knew _exactly_ what they were looking for. But from the lay of what he could feel, she'd had this for quite some time; years, at least.

"How did you come by this?" Wink rumbled, as he brushed the pad of his thumb over her scar once again.

Lorelei had sensed the flash of alarm in Wink when he'd first brushed over that scar on her side, just below her ribs. Sensed also the mild shock followed by the deep concern braided with puzzlement when he'd found what it was, and so she had anticipated the question that he had just asked. It wasn't exactly a pleasant subject to answer for, though. Softly, she explained, "You were not in the region at the time when this-" she tucked her hand under her cami-top and swept her fingertips from over her scar down his thumb, to his hand and across his other fingers; a single, fluttering caress that left trails of sensation through his skin "-happened. It was back in Europe, after the Party began setting covert operations in motion towards 'preternatural' targets and before the expansion into the rest of Europe." The rhinemaiden's ultra-gold eyes took on a strange look, as though her very soul was choking on something, yet she spoke clearly and softly. "Some friends of _mein Vater,_ were... Their children had been at another house, with other friends, when the agents came to take the family to heaven-only-knows-where. When I went to their home to visit them, all I found were little Sofie _und_ Gustav. They were... they were so..." Lorelei couldn't even find the right words for it, her hand unconsciously squeezed Wink's just a little. Her eyes, her lovely face, conveyed _so_ much of what she could not find the proper words to say to the troll, and he understood. He understood very well. How many times had he found helpless children huddled in the wreck of what was left of their homes over the countless war-torn years of his life?... How many more would there be before he breathed his last?

Seeing the look in his eye and the way that the lines of his mouth were drawn, Lorelei understood that he knew what she was trying to say without words, and so she simply continued. "I contacted my parents, arranged for the children to find a home - if only a temporary one - with another family friend, and I would take them back with me to my parents' tavern to rendezvous. What I had not counted on - what I had not thought of - was the agent that was left staked out by the place." Wink's arms slid to wrap around Lorelei's lower back and held her just fractionally closer to him. A subtle action born from the instinct to protect her, though he knew that these events had happened decades ago. Lorelei followed the very slight momentum started by the gesture and leaned into his body, her fair cheek brushing in softest strokes against the leathery hide of his chest and setting off fireworks around his beating heart, as he let his arms fold all the way around her, holding her close. The rhinemaiden continued, "He shadowed us for a ways, until Gustav caught on to him. I picked up Sofie and started running, Gustav close at my side. Gunshots were fired, but it was only to frighten us, make us stop or stumble. He wasn't trying to hit us, at first. When I felt sharp debris flying up close to my footsteps to pelter my legs I knew that he was shooting in earnest, then, determined to stop us." Lorelei paused for a moment, deciding how to go on, what to say. "It ended with a short scuffle where I had the element of surprise, which is the only reason that he didn't _end_ me, knowing the training that he must have had to be in covert operations. I got the gun from him and shot him twice at point-blank range... It felt..." The Rhine daughter lifted her head up to look the silver troll in eye once more, her face taking on a look of wonder, an echo of the incredulity she must have known in that long-ago moment at what she had done. "... Like nothing you would believe," she said with a soft half-smile. Wink knew that she was talking more about how it felt physically, and the impression that it left, than anything else. Killing an enemy seeking her blood was almost as nothing to her. A fact of nature and survival, unremarkable. But to hold a gun, to _fire_ it... A human's weapon! _That_ must have been incredible, in so many nuances of the word. "But it was not enough to kill him, not quickly," she went on, murmuring like a stream in the night. "He choked on his own blood for a while in my arms, before I had the mercy to break his neck." The slightest, barely perceptible twitch in her body at the mention of that memory gave away more than she had intended.

_She was in pain at that moment,_ Wink deduced from that ever-so-slight slip in her body-language, _probably wincing from the wound at her side._ It all made sense now, how she would have a scar. A human's bullet had grazed her, left her bleeding. Torn across her flesh with iron steel at highest force and speed, and left her with a mark that was unlike any other, one that would never go away. Even wounds and scars from iron could heal in a fae, but not when inflicted like _that,_ there was only so much trauma that the cells of a body could take. Here and now, if anyone had been around to say, "it's lucky that there's only one," or "how fortunate that it is only small," he would have growled at them to go bite their tongue.

Her next words did nothing to cool the dark emotions that were smoldering behind his carefully blank, battle-scarred face.

"He would not have killed us... would not have had to try to kill me, if I had gone quietly, or if he had given me worse than this-" Lorelei's hand softly, languidly, moved smoothly over his rough hand that once again idled in place over her skin, over her bullet-graze scar "-and crippled me." Her voice was kept carefully even and matter-of-fact. Her shimmering gold eyes, however, were not. "My best guess is that it's part of the reason why an agent was left staked out there in the first place; not just to see when the children returned, and finish acquiring the whole fey family, but to see who else might come by to check in on them, lead them to more potential targets. That is why he shadowed us for as long as he remained undetected, that is what he would have done." The beautiful faery woman leaned back into the embrace of the troll warrior once more, and both were silent for a brief moment before she huffed a short, sardonic laugh. _"Wie seltsam,"_ she murmured, "he never kissed me, never asked me to a concert or a dance... Never even knew my name." Her glorious voice had taken on a faint edge of bitterness. "Yet he left me with something permanent to remember him and his love by... His love for his _Führer_ and what he would have done for that love - to me, to Sofie _und_ Gustav, to anyone..." The bitterness left her voice and was replaced by the weight of a strange resignation that carried a only hint of sadness. _"Aber,_ I sometimes wonder, when I think of him, if he truly believed in what he did, if he was beguiled by the promises of a charismatic leader, or if he ever felt afraid, and saw loyalty as the better option for survival."

Lorelei sighed heavily, like a wave breaking on a great lakeshore. Then the river siren turned her head, and began softly tracing over the lines of a few of the scars on Wink's chest with smooth, sliding strokes of her satin lips, as red as mortal blood; scars that had been gotten in the ancient wars between the human and fae kingdoms. Heat writhed like snakes through the troll's veins at the contact. Electric sparks sang up and down his spine, and he wasn't entirely sure, but he was fairly certain that his bristles were starting to stand on end. It was a welcome change from the smoldering rage that he had felt a moment ago.

"Did you ever wonder?" Lorelei's voice came through to his hazing mind like a gold coin tossed into a fountain, making the still surface of the water ripple. He knew that she was talking about the humans that he had fought against in those long-ago battles; if he ever wondered the same thing as she about _his_ enemies.

"I might have," he rumbled, when he found breath enough to answer (which she was making rather difficult with that _achingly_ sensuous mouth of hers). "Not while they were trying to kill me. I was preoccupied with thinking of other things just then." This made her pretty face break into a smile, her sharp teeth shining like pearls in contrast with the red of her mouth. "But I might have," he repeated, with a soft smile of his own and a twinkle in his eye.

_**TO BE CONTINUED... **_

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><p><strong>AN** - Since Lorelei lives _in_ the city, she can't count on getting to a river for her wild food needs all the time, so the aquarium-wall full of various kinds of pan fish is the solution for that.

- Glühweinkuchen is a German sheet cake pastry made with Glühwein. Glühwein (Mulled Wine) is a drink enjoyed during the Christmas holidays and throughout the winter months in Germany and other European countries, made from red wine and various spices, then heated just below the boiling point so that the alcohol doesn't evaporate, and served hot. The particular variation that Gita made is Honig (Honey) Glühwein.

- Mjölnir is the legendary hammer (some would say warhammer) of the enduringly famous god of thunder, lightning, and storms from Norse and Germanic myth, Thor.

- Regular fish don't have eyelids, so they _can't_ blink. The fish that blinks at Wink and Lorelei is a magical animal, a faery fish.

- Some folks really do have a pattern of healing from scars, because they fade until they're so light and so faded that you don't even know, unless you have it _specifically_ pointed out to you that there's some minute irregularity in the pattern of skin there, but otherwise can't tell at all and don't even care. Other folks (like Dylan and John Myers), not so lucky. :P I wanted to mention that so that no one wrongly thinks that it's just some faerie thing that I made up, because it isn't.

- "[T]he Party" refers to the German nazi political party of the 20th century. Not too many people in the mainstream outside of Europe bother to learn about how the word "nazi" is actually not a word, but an acronym for what translates as "national socialist." Don't take my word for it, look it up.

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><p><strong>VERY IMPORTANT NOTE!<strong>

So, circumstances in my world have come to a crisis, and for the next twenty-one days, _**at least,**_ I will not be able to read/review or write/post ANYTHING. It's complicated and I can't say much, out of respect for those involved, but suffice it to say that the most precious things in my whole world need my full dedication with them, whether I'm miserable about how things have to be or not.

Please do **not** let this discourage you from reviewing or messaging me. I **will** still be allowed and able to answer reviews and questions, and reply to messages (ones with hugs and various ways to say "dear god, what the #$% IS that thing!" in foreign languages are appreciated).

I would love to hear from just about anyone at this point. Say "Hi" all you Wink/Lorelei fans... I need it more than ever.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Glühweinkuchen = (literally) glow-wine cake

Fräulein Lorelei = Miss Lorelei

Wo ist Gunter? = Where is Gunter?

Hier = here

Was? = What?

Was ist los? = What's wrong?/What's the matter?

mein Vater = my father

und = and

Wie seltsam = how funny/strange

Aber = But/however


	12. Silver And Gold Part 3 Continued

**SUMMARY:** Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in _Chapter 41: Silver and Gold_, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get _that_ there?

**PART 3 Continued:** Tying off the cliffhanger from _Silver And Gold Part 3: Look of Love._ After some sweet kissing, Wink has just discovered Lorelei's bullet-graze scar and been told the story behind it. Not very long but at least it ties off the scene. *whew!*

Special note to **girlmundy**: THANK YOU! Thank you _so_ much! You are the first person besides LA Knight to give me _any_ real feedback AT ALL on this fic, and I TOTALLY appreciate it! Vielen Dank! Muchos gracias! Köszönöm szépen! Thank you! :D A fellow fan of unconventional fae romance, eh? Glad to meet you. I just can't help loving Beauty and the Beast types.

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><p>Lorelei sighed heavily, like a wave breaking on a great lakeshore. Then the river siren turned her head, and began softly tracing over the lines of a few of the scars on Wink's chest with smooth, sliding strokes of her satin lips, as red as mortal blood; scars that had been gotten in the ancient wars between the human and fae kingdoms. Heat writhed like snakes through the troll's veins at the contact. Electric sparks sang up and down his spine, and he wasn't entirely sure, but he was fairly certain that his bristles were starting to stand on end. It was a welcome change from the smoldering rage that he had felt a moment ago.<p>

"Did you ever wonder?" Lorelei's voice came through to his hazing mind like a gold coin tossed into a fountain, making the still surface of the water ripple. He knew that she was talking about the humans that he had fought against in those long-ago battles; if he ever wondered the same thing as she about _his_ enemies.

"I might have," he rumbled, when he found breath enough to answer (which she was making rather difficult with that _achingly_ sensuous mouth of hers). "Not while they were trying to kill me. I was preoccupied with thinking of other things just then." This made her pretty face break into a smile, her sharp teeth shining like pearls in contrast with the red of her mouth. "But I might have," he repeated, with a soft smile of his own and a twinkle in his eye. "Although, such thoughts are generally wasted on humanity."

_"Warum?"_ Lorelei inquired, curious to hear his reasoning behind that statement.

"They are worse than sheep," he told her. "Most humans _seek_ to be ruled. They _fear_ being without someone to take responsibility for them, to lead them and direct their lives, to give them assurances that they feel they cannot guarantee for themselves. Their loyalty is all too easily bought and traded for such favors by those who seek _not_ to be ruled, but to rule and dominate others." Wink's face took on a mirthless, pitying smirk, and his one eye held a distant look for a minute. "Wolves leading sheep..." he rumbled softly, half-absently. His eye refocused back to the comely Rhine daughter occupying his lap. "So you see, such wondering serves no point, for whether he believes it to be right or not, a human and a soldier _will_ do whatever his leader commands."

"And for that, deepest guilt and innocence rest upon his soul, both at once, in equal measure," murmured Lorelei solemnly. "If you cannot command, then you must obey." Wink nodded, seriously.

The river faery sighed with a _hmm,_ as she once again leaned into the solid form of the great silver warrior. His thumbs traced lazily over the places where they rested - his left at her back, his right at the outside of her thigh - as her fingertips went in slow, languid patterns over his chest and shoulder like the flow of water, following line of scar and muscle, leaving soft trails of sensation over his hide. Her swan-soft cheek brushed in smallest strokes against the planes of his chest again, which Wink found was something that never failed to light a warm spark inside of him or make the rhythm of his heart beat just a little more strongly. Lorelei's expression was unreadable, as her fingers trailed from his chest, down over the buckles and stitching of his torso armor, to trace over and over again the elegant lines of hammered metal, the crest of Bethmoora, shining from its place on the wide leather belt at the cave troll's waist. Wink's one eye watched the fine features of his companion's niveous face carefully, but whatever was there could have been interpreted in any of a million ways, shifting and curling on itself into an indecipherable mystery. Then a half-smile that only barely reached her far-away eyes bloomed on her dark rose lips and she murmured absently, and so softly that it could have been almost a whisper, "Nothing is ever as cut as crystal."

Wink lifted her chin with one wide metal fingertip, gently tilting her face up to regard him. His eye held hers with a look of absolute certainty and sincerity, and his voice rumbled with low, serious tones, as he told her, "Some things are."

Lorelei's ultra-gold eyes widened, her ruby lips parted slightly in only the barest resemblance to being slack-jawed, as the true weight and depth of what he meant rendered her speechless and lifted her heart into the sky. A slight, tender smile played over the troll's mouth, and he cupped the side of her face with his flesh-and-blood hand, bringing his mouth to hers and kissing her deeply.

Lorelei's long, slender arms snaked up to Wink's brawny shoulders. A hum of pleasure and heart-pounding joy escaped the rhinemaiden as she melted into the silver warrior's kiss, and the sub-audible magic of that sound glided up and down his spine, through his chest, and left his head swimming. The sensation of it was more electric and ethereal than physical, but every nerve that it touched _sang_ with it. His left hand slid from the side of her face, down the elegant line of her swan-like neck where he felt her pulse beating like the flutter of butterfly wings underneath the delicate gold chains of her jewelry, down over her slender shoulder to her back, all in one smooth caress that drank her in and left her wishing that he would do it again. After a minute his hands traveled from her back to her sides again, his thumbs once more going back and forth in firm strokes over her ribs. Back and forth, back and forth. Lorelei's already naturally acute sense of touch was almost immediately on edge, heightened and aware of every inch of every piece of him that was touching her.

While his kisses and his tender attentions were rendering her at a bit of a loss for breath, another pass of Wink's thumb over her bullet-graze scar triggered a thought in Lorelei's brain. "I still have the gun from the incident," she told him, after they had broken apart for air. Wink blinked once with curiosity, and grunted a noise that roughly translated as something akin to "oh yeah?" Lorelei looked thoughtful for the span of half a second; then, smiling, she lifted herself from the troll warrior's lap and said, _"Komm,_ I would like to show you."

_**TO BE CONTINUED... **_

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><p><strong>AN** - "If you cannot command, then you must obey" is a quote from the _Hellboy II_ movie. Right before Hellboy kills the forest god, Nuada is trying to persuade the demon BPRD agent over to his cause, and Prince Nuada says this line to him (and I absolutely agree with him). What I get the most from that slice of the scene, every time I see it, is that if you don't take charge of your own actions and think for yourself, _other_ people will direct your actions and make decisions _for_ you, whether you believe in them or not, and you _will_ go along with it... for which the consequences can be terrible.

- "Nothing is ever as cut as crystal" really is a favorite saying of mine. It means that nothing is as sharply or clearly defined, or black and white, as people would like to believe. There are too often multiple facets (like crystal) to an issue to definitely call it one thing or another, because it's often both (or more) all at once, depending on how you look at it. The character of the "movie villain" Prince Nuada is a prime example of this, I think all would agree.

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><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Warum? = Why?


	13. Silver And Gold Part 4: Echoes of Fire

**SUMMARY:** Details of Wink's visit to Lorelei in _Chapter 41: Silver and Gold_, of "Once Upon A Time," by LA Knight. After Wink has delivered Nuada's presents to Dylan at dawn (flowers and silly socks! whoo!), he takes his own sweet time making Nuada wait, and comes back to the lair at sunset with a smear of Lorelei's lip-rouge on his shoulder. Hmm, how'd he get _that_ there?

**PART 4:** Directly continued from the end of _Silver And Gold Part 3_ (chapter 12 of this fic). Lorelei is about to show Wink the gun that she was shot with back in the 1930s, but the day's not over yet...

**A/N** - I _was_ going to post this with the rest of everything _Silver And Gold_ once it was _all_ finished, but this scene was just too much of a battle to write, and frankly too important a scene, for me to just let it sit quietly. I henceforth declare my victory over it by posting it. Please enjoy.

**BIG THANK YOU **to** Ruby Red-ink** for reviewing Chapters 1-3 of this fic (as of posting this).

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><p>Upon departing the living room, the enormous cave troll and the slender rhinemaiden started down the main hall together, when a loud <em>*ping-a-ding!*<em> sounded from one room that had a pair of glass doors with soft white curtaining over the glass-panes from the inside. Lorelei paused, and then headed into that room, Wink trudging behind her.

It was Lorelei's office. There were shelves of binders, notebooks, and files that were all hard-copy archives of ledgers, accounting, and other business-related documents no doubt. There was an oak-wood desk, with a silver-framed, black-and-white photograph - a picture of Lorelei, roughly around the time that her aging halted, attired in sleeveless _Landhausmode_ and smilingly cuddling a wolpertinger - and a computer on the desk, but the desktop unit was not quite like common human models. Some of the materials used in its composition suggested that gnomish tinkering had been involved.

Lorelei bent down a little to get a better look at the screen, as she moved the mouse to make it light up to life. As she bent further down to type some sort of message into the proper section of the interface, her long, coal-dark hair fell in front of the side of her face. With a short toss of her head it fell to the other side, over the shoulder that was opposite Wink, like a sleek dusky curtain behind her profile, exposing the alabaster expanse of the side of her slender throat, from her collar bones all the way to the delicate point of her ear. The silver troll was aware of how his eye was drawn to that now-open, vulnerable-looking line, but he didn't bother trying to look anywhere else. The comely water-faery payed no mind to his looking, however, as she clicked an icon that said "all sounds off" and turned back to regard her guest. "This way," she said.

The river maid approached another set of curtained, glass-paned doors in a wall adjacent to the doors that she and her bristly companion had just come through... and walked right into the greens and blues of a room that had several handcarved wooden dressers and jewelry cabinets, and one _enormous_ mattress lain atop a tight row of thick, carved oaken slabs, and spread over with a dark blue brocade coverlet. (Wink's brow lifted a little at the sight, the thing could have fit _four_ of Lorelei, conservatively.) The prevailing theme of the room seemed to imitate the serenity of a calm river, or a pond or lake, with dragonflies, cattails, and waterlilies carved into the wood of the furniture and the bed-support, or embroidered onto the coverlet and the curtains. The whole room could have made one feel almost as if they were in deep water.

Lorelei approached one dresser by an open archway that led out of the room proper and into a tile-floored area with a long, wide mirror, a granite sink, and - further away and to the left - a _very_ large granite bath next to a dark gray marble shower. She pulled open one of the smaller top drawers, and put her hands inside, and when she pulled them out again the sleek, dark lines of a semi-automatic, nineteen-thirties-make pistol filled the grasp of her soft, white fingers. Lorelei released the magazine from it (which Wink noticed was fully loaded) and put it back into the open drawer, then she turned to the silver troll and held the handgun a little ways out in front of herself, to better show him. "This is an original Walther _Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell,_ or 'PPK,'" she told him. She shifted her hold on the weapon to demonstrate the proper grip with it, turning and aiming at the wall above the bed (to which the warrior's eye was unavoidably drawn, once again). "Traditional double action trigger mechanism, so no need to manually cock the hammer before firing. Not as much magazine capacity as the original 'PP' that preceded it, but more concealable. A reliable and enduring favorite among many acquainted with the use of firearms, even to this day."

"Incredible," remarked Wink, not really understanding or caring for the specific details and other what-nots surrounding the human weapon, but more remarking upon the fact that Lorelei somehow remained unaffected by it and, moreover, clearly knew what she was doing with it. "How is it that you can handle it with no adverse effects?"

"It is cursed," she told him with a grin, auriferous eyes a-sparkle, relaxing her grip and lowering her arm. "It was during the flight from _Deutschland_ that one of my fellow travelers - a gypsy wise woman - caught me with this among what other things I had and asked how such a thing came to be mine. She was of the opinion that one who slays their foes in defense of the lives and freedom of those who would _remain_ free, more than anyone, should always have the right to take up their fallen enemy's weapon and to wield it as they see fit, as has always been done with fallen adversaries' swords since time forgotten. This gun's curse," the Germanic siren looked down at the semi-auto in her hands, "is to never deny me that right." She lifted her eyes to meet his once more, "It knows its master and it knows whom I can trust. Its metals cannot harm me, nor anyone that seeks no harm against me to whom I have given leave to touch it. Other than that..." A mischievous glint caught light in eyes like dragon's gold, and a wicked smile curled the corners of carmine lips as she shrugged in affected nonchalance. "Well, all bets are off. Needless to say, whatever _bullets_ I require are not bound by any such magic, as they are separate from that which comprises the gun itself." Lorelei turned and took aim at the wall behind the bed again. (Was she doing that on purpose? Wink wondered.)

"Incredible," was all the veteran warrior said aloud, repeating his earlier sentiment.

After a moment or two, the faery beauty slanted her troll companion an enigmatic look, and slowly lowered her arm, turning to face him. The Rhine daughter seemed to be considering something, her eyes searching his in silence for a while. "What are you thinking?" Wink grunted, his deep voice sounding low with intrigue.

Lorelei licked her lips, opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, still considering, and finally asked softly, in a voice as clear as a spring, "Would you dare touch it?"

Wink's brow lifted, his craggy, tusked head cocked ever-so-slightly to one side. Now it was _he_ that bore a considering look over _his_ trollish aspect. The cadence of her query had been as one of simple curiosity, as though she were asking if she would see him at a festival that she was going to, or if he would try a new ale. But her gleaming eyes, still fixed on his and searching, and the low tone of her canorous voice gave full disclosure to the gravity of what she asked.

_Would_ he dare touch it?

While clearly not some fearfully kept secret, it was no small thing that she had just shared with him... This "sword" of human's fire, steel, and thunder. A human-born fey creature carrying a gun was one thing - vampires, cursed lycanthropes and the like - but this... Wink knew full-well that there were a few amongst the Fair Folk _(But even a meager few is more than enough,_ he thought) who would be very likely to regard the idea of a river faerie, a siren daughter of the river Rhine, bearing a heretofore _purely human_ weapon of poisonous metal as a threat. This was both lessened and worsened by the fact that Lorelei neither owed nor gave her allegiance to anyone, but only gave her loyalty to those that she loved, there was no crown and no clan that she ultimately answered to. Yet all of this was mitigated by the fact that she maintained this space of neutrality in this all-important city, this multi-layered epicenter of the world, _both_ worlds, here in Fafner's Cave. A hostess of peaceable goings-on, where quarrels were left at the door for a time. Only Lorelei's reputation, easily known and vouched for by anyone, saved her from whatever possibility there could have ever been of a few certain fae interests in influential places attempting to _end_ her if it ever came to their attention that she had this gun, and could _use_ it.

If ever there was a sign that she trusted him, this was it.

Did _he_ trust _her_ as much?

Wink's one eye stayed locked with Lorelei's... as he slowly held out his open hand - his flesh hand - palm up, thinking somewhere in the back of his mind that he had to be crazy or a fool, or finally senile, to be doing this. The river-faery stepped nearer to him, closing the distance between them. She ever-so-gently took his massive, rough hand in her smaller, softer one, as if she could somehow keep him from pulling away, and carefully placed the handgun in the center of his palm. Wink tensed, but did not pull away, did not even flinch.

Nothing happened.

No burning, no sickening pain, no _anything._ The metal was cool and lifeless to the touch, but for the barest residual warmth from Lorelei's grip.

Wink stared at the gun in his hand, his one eye wide, very much at a loss for words. Lorelei's fingers whispered softly over his skin, his hand still in her gentle grasp, reassuring him of the solidity and the reality of what was transpiring.

After a while, the ebon-haired maiden murmured, _"Was denkst du jetzt?"_ Her euphonious voice broke the silence as a kiss wakes one from sleep, breaking them from the hold of phantasmagoric visions brought by night.

The silver warrior's eye flicked up to meet his companion's golden gaze, then back to the gun in his hand, running his thumb once over the cool, sleek metal. "I am thinking..." he rumbled, "that this could be counted among the handful of _most bizarre_ moments that I have ever lived through in all my years."

Lorelei laughed, eyes dancing and pointed teeth gleaming as she smiled broadly. She had ascertained as much. Even without the look on his face, the knotting and re-knotting threads of his disbelief and amazement were _quite_ apparent to her perceptive sensibilities. She placed one fair hand in his and took the gun back from him, heading over to the dresser that she had pulled it from to return it to its proper place, replacing the magazine into the pistol and closing it up in the drawer.

A sudden thought sparked in Wink's brain. "You say that it was cursed in the course of your escape to North America," he rumbled, and Lorelei nodded in affirmation. "How _did_ you get out of Germany, by the by?" He inquired, a twinkle of curiosity in his one good eye. "You have mentioned embarking from a port near Lisbon, in the past, but you have never told how you..." He trailed off when he saw how Lorelei's smile slipped _utterly_ away at his question; how the sunlight of her golden eyes seemed suddenly swallowed up and obliterated by invisible clouds.

Wink frowned.

Something was _very_ wrong here.

"What happened?" He growled.

Lorelei said nothing, only stood stock-still in a state that could have been described as mild, silent panic - of the sort that one feels when they are trying to hide a bruise somewhere on their body, but then they are found out anyway. Why did he have to ask _that_ question, so directly? Why now? Was there _even_ any chance that she could get out of this? She concentrated on everything that she could pick up on empathically from the battlescarred behemoth.

His protective instinct was notably on edge. The hotly glowing threads of it lashed about, seeking the thing as yet unknown to him that had evidently made her stop smiling once he had asked her about her escape. Thickly weaving and twining with that, and extending towards her as though it desired to be her lifeline, was his deep concern and care for her... No, there was no getting out of this. Lorelei took a deep breath and let it out slowly, very heavily. She would have to tell him _something._

Wink watched Lorelei's face very carefully. _Oh,_ but he knew _that_ look that she had about her now, knew it _very_ well after seeing it for thousands of years. She was thinking, carefully considering and weighing whatever words she would choose to say to him. Knowing this did nothing to assuage his concern, but only served to make him uneasy. Something had happened, long ago, something that she _did not_ want to divulge. Had something been done to her? To someone who had been with her? Had _she_ had to do something that she thought he might think less of her for? She had done better and worse things than _break a man's neck_ before, when she had to, and no one judged her any lesser for it. He himself had done worse things... _Far_ worse things. As had his prince. He did not think there was much of anything that he _could_ think less of her for. Didn't she know this? "Lorelei...?"

Eyes of dragon's gold flicked up to meet the dark glitter of Wink's one good eye and then away once more. Taking another deep breath, Lorelei pressed her palms together and brought her joined hands up in front of her face, steepling her fingers so that the edge of her index fingers touched her rich crimson mouth. _Out with it,_ her mind told her, _get it over with._ "Safe exit from _Deutschland_ was secured for my family and I through the incurring of a favor, to a former associate of one of my brothers."

Wink stiffened. Something unpleasant began to creep up his spine. His back-bristles prickled. His deep voice stayed even, however, as he rumbled with a thick hint of a growl that he yet managed to hold down, "What manner of favor?"

The Rhine daughter's eyes flashed to his with something in them that seemed to snarl in warning _Do not ask!_ yet pleaded _Save me!_ Something intense that stalled the very breath in his chest.

But in the next heartbeat her eyes broke away from his once again, and her voice carried all the depth of a creek that had swollen with the flood of a stormy downpour - to the point that one could no longer ascertain the bottom of it, and dared not step into it lest they be swept away - as she murmured cryptically, somewhat strainedly, "One where the original favor bears its full repayment in never being fully repaid." Another deep breath. Her hands separated and went up to the sides of her face and a little ways into her thick hair. _"Bitte,_ I wish you would not ask more of this. It is not something that I feel comfortable talking about."

Wink regarded the beautiful faery woman sharing her company with him. "Lorelei-" he started, whether to argue or to say something else, the river maid did not know, and it did not matter, as she cut him off anyway.

"It was a long time ago, Wink," she interrupted, moving to sit on the edge of the bed with her back to the hulking warrior, uttering one of her rhymes as she did so.

_"What's done is done,  
>What's said is said,<br>And no one lives  
>To raise the dead."<em>

Wink only continued to regard her.

She trusted him enough with her _life,_ with her cursed gun, and with sundry other things... But was reluctant to open up to him about this piece of her past...

He supposed that in some way, on some level, he should have felt wounded by that, in some measure, but he did not.

It would have been quite the paradox for him to feel that way, when he trusted her enough to hold _iron steel_ in his _bare hand,_ and yet... The image of golden clockworks surfaced in Wink's mind, and for the briefest, bitter instant, he felt like the most selfish coward ever to walk this city's streets. He shoved the image and the emotion roughly away with a mental snarl.

The entirety of his situation with Lorelei was like a sick joke. A man who had _shot_ her had, even in that moment, had a choice: to act as service to his fuhrer required of him, or to do otherwise. A choice, however slim in its chances, was still a choice, humans were not bound so _deeply_ and _utterly_ to their oaths and their duties of service to each other as fae were. Yet Wink the troll had _no_ such choice, not by _any_ chance, least of all with his service sworn to Prince Nuada of the Bethmooran elves. He _dreaded_ the day that he would ever see Lorelei look on him with pain in her eyes, when all he wanted...

Lorelei felt a heavy but gentle hand on her shoulder, and turned her head to see that it was Wink's bronze one. She raised her ultra-gold eyes to meet his. "Forgive me," he rumbled sincerely. His deep voice was low and quiet, and the sound of it sent butterflies kissing along her spine. "It was never my intention to upset you." Lorelei said nothing, but only nodded as he knelt before her, so that he was almost – _almost,_ but not at all _quite_ – eye-level with her. "What you say is true. The past _is_ dead," he continued. "Unalterable. Nothing comes of dwelling on what cannot be changed. Nothing can undo what has been said, or seen, or done."

"'Learn from the past, live in the present?'" Lorelei softly broke in, postulating in adage.

"Mm," concurred Wink, with a slight smile that was mirrored on the river maid's exquisite face, and a short inclination of his head which meant _Exactly._ The cave troll's metal hand slid lightly from the rhinemaiden's slender shoulder, down the length of her arm to rest by her thigh on the mattress. He brought up his flesh hand to hover by her knee, palm up and open, uncertainly awaiting a fate somewhat different from when he had let her put a gun in his hand.

The soft, light brush of her fingers over the skin of his palm set small shivers through his great, broad shoulders, as she took his hand in both of hers. _So soft,_ he thought, _always so soft, her touch._ When he had a care enough to move his thoughts beyond only the feeling of how her fingertips seemed to be kissing each little nerve in his hand, he asked, "But... You are certain that you do not wish to speak of it?" Lorelei froze, and slanted him a look up through her long, black lashes. Wink canted his head with another slight smile. "I understand," he rumbled, and said no more. A grateful smile curled the corners of the Lorelei's garnet lips, and that familiar sparkle that the troll warrior had always loved returned to her aurulent eyes.

The featherlight attentions of the river maiden resumed, softly igniting ribbons of sensation in the wake of her touch. A couple of times, Wink flexed the muscles of his hand so that his great fingertips would brush against her delicate palm in return, sending sweet electricity up through the nerves of her arm, and for a while, they just sat there, enjoying the moment between them. Lorelei eventually broke the comfortable silence that had taken over the room by saying, as if it had just now occurred to her, "You never pressed the subject of how I left Europe before."

It had been said as a statement, but Wink recognized the underlying question wrapped within it. "It was enough only to know that you were safe and _alive,_ before," he softly growled in reply.

* * *

><p><em>Manhattan, New Year's Eve, 1938<em>

"Should I feel insulted that you have been in my city long enough to go into business for yourself, yet haven't sought me out?" Asked a masculine voice like golden audial velvet from behind Lorelei von der Strom's turned back, with an impish tone of amusement that was only too obvious. It was a voice that she well recognized even over the hubbub of her crowded tavern.

Lorelei whirled around with a gasp and a radiant expression of happy surprise. She was faced with the smiles of Prince Nuada Silverlance and his valet, Wink Ironfist, along with two others – a dökkálfr and a Bethmooran goblin.

The river maid all but jumped to reach over from where she was stationed behind the bar and pulled the crown prince of Bethmoora into an excited - if a bit awkward – hug. Nuada's firegold eyes went a little bit wider at the unexpected embrace, but then he quickly recovered from the surprise and returned the gesture in full measure, smiling broadly and laughing heartily. "I _swear_ to the Everlasting Stars, I did _not_ forget you," declared Lorelei, with a dazzling smile as she let him go, and then her eyes turned to Wink.

"_Laaaaass,"_ the troll half-drawled, half-roared, as the alluring water-faery came out from behind the bar to be pulled close to him in another embrace of happy reunion, his dark eye glittering brightly.

"How did you find me?" Lorelei inquired as Wink released her, turning to face the prince, but not moving from the troll's side.

Nuada's shadow-framed, amber eyes twinkled as he answered oh-so-casually, "Wink informs me that word about the city's faerie markets of late tells of a rather charming, golden-eyed woman, tall in stature, with a face like the midwinter moon and hair like a midsummer midnight-" Lorelei ducked her head with a modest, light gold-kissed blush that was quite endearing to the eyes of the gentlemen around her "-who is recently come from overseas and gone into business for herself here, and that the service of her house is _without fault."_ The blond elf gave a scant shrug, that impish smile simply unerasable from his handsome face. "Needless to say, the description was too familiar to ignore."

Lorelei grinned, the sharp, pearly points of her teeth flashing in the tavern lights. "Who are these two gentlemen?" She asked, indicating with a slight tilt of her chin the two companions that the elf-prince and the cave troll had brought with them.

Nuada turned to the dökkálfr. "This is Erik, the one who assisted with fashioning Wink's famous hand,-" as if on cue, Wink flexed and curled his bronze fingers impressively, smirking when Lorelei giggled "-and this is Laigdech," continued Nuada, gesturing to the sallow-skinned goblin. "He is a member of the Artificers' Guild, and it was through his connections and information that we were able to find you." The conversation, heretofore in German, switched to the Brooklyn-born troll dialect that served as the common trade language of the Troll Market, found under the Brooklyn Bridge, out of common courtesy to all present company, as Nuada said, "Erik, Laigdech, may I present Lorelei von der Strom, a dear friend to Mr. Wink and I."

Laigdech bowed deeply, with a softly uttered, "_Mo Mhuire,_" as Lorelei inclined her head in turn to the goblin. As he stood straight again, he said, "Any friend of His Highness is a friend of mine." Erik took the rhinemaiden's soft, slender hand in his calloused grasp, and murmured what a pleasure it was to make her acquaintance. He laid a very brief kiss to the back of her hand, his garnet eyes twinkling as she returned the sentiment with a smile.

"You have done well for yourself," rumbled Wink, looking about the busy tavern, appropriately named _Fafner's Cave._ "Word has it that you came to this city nigh only two months ago."

"Word travels faster than fire in the Hidden channels of this city," assented Lorelei. "Much faster and more widely than anywhere else that I've seen. I developed a good rapport with what contacts I had to make to get business started, and that was all it took to get my first patrons in the door. After that..." The Germanic siren gestured about the tavern. "Reputation and service vouch for each other, and business speaks for itself." The smile on her face was _quite_ fetching right then.

"How have things been in Europe?" Nuada inquired. "The last that we saw you was just ere the Summer Solstice." There was a carefully neutral expression on the royal elf's face and the tone of his voice was deceptively mild and conversational.

_Translation,_ thought Lorelei,_ why are you here in New York and not Bavaria? Were you in danger? Have you been alright? Why didn't you reach out to us sooner? _She knew full-well that Prince Nuada kept himself and his bristly vassal apprised by various means of the goings-on that were of note across the ocean. He knew _exactly_ how things were in Europe right now.

_"Ich weiß nicht,"_ answered the rhinemaiden, speaking plainly, neither attempting to hide nor to reveal anything with her voice, but letting the words stand for themselves. "It was no longer safe for us to stay. My family and I left Europe by sea, embarking from outside Lisbon and arriving here discreetly within the city, as Wink mentioned, almost two months ago. _Was möchten Sie trinken?_ First drinks on the house, for all four of you." This last statement was met with much appreciation by goblin, troll, and both elves.

Erik did not stay long. After a few rounds, the elvish smith departed to return to his family. Laigdech was soon hailed by two other Irish goblins that he knew and got into a drinking game with them. Nuada eventually became lacking enough in sobriety that he did not mind at all when he was approached by a red-haired pixie to dance in the front room of Fafner's Cave, even though there was a lively swing-dance tune currently playing – a genre of music that Nuada could easily tolerate, but generally did not care for. Wink and Lorelei were left to each other's company at the bar.

"It is good to see you doing alright for yourself here," the grizzly warrior rumbled to the elegant bar-keeper.

Lorelei gave him a warm smile. "Everything that you have ever told me or taught me about this city and this country has helped me to settle in and adapt," she told him, the sound of her fey voice was like a sun-shot stream effortlessly tumbling gold across its bed. "I don't think that I could do that anywhere else, not yet."

After a moment or two - spent staring at the drink in his hand - Wink came out with what rested more heavily on his mind. "You could have reached out in some way," he rumbled softly, not looking up from his drink and not disguising the slight edge in his voice that betrayed just how he had worried when he thought of her since the last time that he saw her. "We would have come for you if you had need of us, Silverlance and I."

Lorelei shook her head at him gently. Her voice had all the liquid softness of a deep river as she said, "Try not to let your drink talk for you, Wink." She turned away to stow a departing patron's payment in the proper place behind the bar. "We both know what could happen if the powers behind the Reich ever managed to somehow get their hands on an elfin prince, and the circumstances would have made it _exactly_ that kind of a risk. I am not worth that."

The hard _THUNK!_ of a tankard meeting the solid surface of the top of the bar immediately prompted her to whirl around. Her wide golden eyes were met with Wink's scowling face and glittering eye. He growled, deep voice rumbling low as he spoke, "I do not _ever_ want to hear you talk like that again."

For a while, Lorelei could only stand there, utterly stunned at the troll's sudden outburst. After a few moments, when she remembered once again how to move and how to breathe, she nodded, just the barest movement of her head, and whispered, _"Na schön."_ She continued that ever-so-slight nodding of her head for a few seconds more, as Wink, coming down off the sudden surge in emotion that her words had unintentionally aroused, took generous swigs from his drink with his mechanical fist while he crept his other hand across the bar towards her – very, very subtly reaching for her.

Lorelei slid her hand, soft and pale as a snowflake yet as warm as Life itself, into his rough-hided grasp, and his large fingers closed around it protectively as she gave his hand a small squeeze.

All was well in Manhattan.

* * *

><p>Wink gently grasped Lorelei's fingers in his, and lifted her to rise with him as he got up from where he knelt on the floor. Lorelei followed the pull of the motion that he'd started easily. They were standing so close now, as close as they had been in the kitchen, but when the silver troll pulled the beautiful rhinemaiden closer it was not for a kiss. It was just to have her near. Just to feel the rhythm of her breath within her body, pulled against his. Just to deeply inhale that refreshing, watery scent that hung as closely and thickly about her as mist over the surface of a wide, deep river, and let it banish all other thoughts in his brain... And Lorelei just leaned into him, and let him.<p>

The bitterness that the water-faery had sensed in her bulky companion some moments ago had confused her, even moreso the fact that it was primarily directed towards himself. Why should he feel that way? All he had done was ask an innocent question, he didn't _know._ But after what had amounted to their consensus not to speak of what had happened... such a melancholy had slipped over him, and her only thought now was to chase it away, burn it, leave no corner for it to safely reside. Lorelei began lightly tracing again the fine lines that crisscrossed Wink's dark gray hide over the planes of his broad chest, lines made by muscle and memory, with her soft lips. The touch was slow and lingering, hot with her breath, and that heat traveled in a shimmering whisper down his spine, curling around his insides and blooming into something incandescent within his core. The urge to catch her mouth with his could not be denied.

Lorelei was only too happy to respond, and she soon lost her sense of awareness to the firing of her own calescent veins, as she met his hungry mouth and gave to him willingly. That was, until...

_*Bump*_

"Oh!" Lorelei gasped, as the backs of her legs bumped into the bed behind her. She glanced briefly behind her at the grandiose piece of furniture and then turned back with a sheepish smile to Wink, who was eying the brocade-covered mattress with a wry look of his own. "Impressive, isn't it?" The Rhine daughter quipped. "But that's not where I sleep."

Wink made a very swift decision to _not_ let his mind wander down the paths of all the possibilities _that_ could have meant, instead giving her a look that said _Oh?_

But no sooner were the words out of Lorelei's mouth than it seemed that a light flicked on in her head, and that sly-as-a-fox smile that made the troll's heart jump more than it ever did before lately appeared again on her luminous, moon-pale face, and she said, _"Komm,"_ grasping Wink's meaty hand in hers and leading him out of the room, all the while with him grinning like an idiot behind her and wondering what adventure she was dragging him off to _now._

**_TO BE CONTINUED..._**

* * *

><p><strong>AN** – Although it can be validly argued that Wink is still making excuses to himself, who else finds it ironic that a man who _shot_ Lorelei had a choice, but a man who _loves_ her has no choice? Before all is said and done, _both_ will have hurt her, in some serious and unforgettable way.

- _Landhausmode_ refers to dresses that are loosely based on the dirndl, a type of traditional dress worn in Germany and Austria. You might recognize it in the typical "brewmaid" attire of Oktoberfest costumes, but that's only _one_ variation.

- Wolpertingers are critters from Bavarian folklore, most commonly described as a rabbit with wings, fangs, and horns or antlers (I'm partial to the antlered description). Not at all to be confused with the North American jackalope, they're completely different creatures.

- The Walther PPK is a double action semi-automatic pistol that loads with a magazine, and has its origins in the Weimar Republic (Germany) in 1931. Smith & Wesson currently manufactures them in the USA under license from Walther these days. Many would know it as the same gun that James Bond used, and it is also the make of gun that (officially) Adolf Hitler committed suicide with. But in the _Hellboy_ universe, the official story is a hoax and Hitler's death happens discreetly in the 1950s.

- Historical note of interest: Hitler made it so that the German populace could not own guns, only the police and military. Well, guess what, the Nazis _were_ the police and military. Needless to say, you can see what disarming the population did in the average German's favor. **:P**

- "By the by" is not a typo. It is a mostly archaic term that means "by the way."

- Lisbon is the largest coastal city and capital of the country of Portugal, the Western-most country in all Europe. Directly between Germany and Portugal are the countries of Spain and France (going West to East).

- The Born-in-New-York trade dialect of troll was inspired by the character Johann Krauss's line from the _Hellboy II_ movie where he relates that the tooth-fairy informant remembers market sounds "and a peculiar troll language." Since _**over 800**_ different languages are spoken in New York City, some dialects of which were actually _born_ and evolved there (i.e. Nuyorican), I figured the spoken trade language of the Troll Market could possibly count as one, being evidently "peculiar."

- In 1938, things were _not good,_ in Europe. The very next year, in September of 1939, World War Two _officially_ began.

- It is my impression that music genres like jazz and swing were among the last handful of what could be considered "enjoyable" or at least "tolerable" music by older fae such as Nuada and Wink before the evolution of music in human culture went down the drain with the 1950s and beyond. Hence, why they don't mind it so much and might even like it in a few cases.

* * *

><p><strong>TRANSLATIONS<strong>

Deutschland = Germany

Was denkst du jetzt? = What are you thinking?

Bitte = Please

Mo Mhuire = (Gaelic) My lady

Ich weiß nicht = I don't know

Was möchten Sie trinken? = What would you like to drink?


End file.
